From: news@alderson.users.panix.com   
      
   cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) writes:   
      
    [ snip snip snip ]   
      
   > It could also be that there are regulatory issues requiring certification of   
   > a new platform, whereas virtualizing it is ok; possibly Stromasys had already   
   > checked that box.   
      
   Back in the 1990s (so probably cool to talk about), Lockheed-Martin Data   
   Services   
   was responsible (under government contract) for keeping track of all the   
   plutonium   
   that had ever been produced.  They did this on a group of 14 DECsystem-10s   
   (KL-10 based), 12 redundant and 2 hot spares.   
      
   They approached my then PoE, where one of the hats I wore was pre- and   
   post-sales   
   customer support, informally before issuing an RPQ.  We only supported TOPS-20   
   on   
   our expanded clone platform, but for that large a sale we were willing to do   
   the   
   port of Tops-10.   
      
   The reason they approached us was that we produced real, honest to $DEITY,   
   hardware   
   rather than an emulator (which DEC was offering at the time, running on an   
   Alpha   
   under VMS).  (If they chose the emulator, or ported their database system to a   
   different architecture, an audit would be triggered of all the plutonium   
   storage   
   facilities overseen by DoE/DoD, which no one wanted to have happen for   
   reasons.)   
   Because our hardware qualified as a drop-in replacement, no audit trigger   
   arose.   
      
   We did the port of Tops-10 in short order, based on a previous request that had   
   gone away in favor of TOPS-20 before completion, and I contacted the gent with   
   whom I had been in contact about getting that RPQ generated, only to be told   
   that   
   their entire program had been defunded in the new budget being passed at that   
   moment in DC.   
      
   Sic transit gloria mundi.  (Gloria threw up in the bus on Monday.)   
      
   I suspect that the VMS system under discussion is this thread is in similar   
   straits.   
      
   --   
   Rich Alderson					  news@alderson.users.panix.com   
         Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,   
   	  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.   
   									--Galen   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)