DIGITAL ALPHA hardware and Athena/Unix Operating Systems
Following on from the VAX/VMS systems the next major procurement in 1993 was for Digital Alpha hardware running the Athena system ( based on MIT Athena ).
Digital did port VMS to the Alpha chip but most Universities at that time were moving to Unix and open source software.
The image above shows Matt Beare setting up a graphics workstation for an open day demonstration.
Athena was a very secure service but this caused some problems interworking with departmental Unix systems and after a short service period the system was converted to standard Digital Unix but with a few local modifications to make cloning of the workstations possible.
UEA UNIX
The Alphas consisted of 5 model 3000/400 servers and 15 model 3000/300 workstations intended for graphical use.
The workstations had huge 19 inch CRT monitors which needed two people to lift safely. They were connected by both copper and fibre optic cables running ethernet and FDDI respectively.
An overnight service for parallel computing used the fibre optic links with dedicated software while daytime use was reserved for interactive graphics applications.
The following slides presented at a UK Universities Athena conference, held at UEA, give an overview of this service.
UEA ATHENA