Like a cuckoo in the nest, Digital Equipment Corp turned up at the SunWorld show last week to preview FreePort, its free binary translation tool that translates user-executable code for Sparc-based systems running SunOS 4.1 into Alpha executable code for Digital Unix. DEC has had some experience of binary translators, having already written VEST, for VAX to Alpha, and MX, MIPS Ultrix to Alpha. FreePort acts like a compiler, using a Sparc executable as a source file to generate Alpha binary code. The real source code is not required, and it doesn’t matter in what language the application was written. DEC is not offering a Solaris 2 to Digital Unix version, saying that it is concentrating on where Sun is at its most vulnerable. According to DEC, SunOS users are faced with an increasingly outdated system, running on older hardware, with less performance and with a shrinking applications catalogue. Staying with Sun means a transition to Solaris 2.x, notoriously difficult with earlier versions, and then maybe another one to the 64-bit version, it says. FreePort works with eight out of 10 applications – and either works completely or doesn’t work at all. DEC guarantees that performance will be at least comparable with that of the original, although any additional performance that might be expected from the Alpha chip is soaked up dealing with complexities such as endian conversions and 32-bit to 64-bit addressing. DEC hopes FreePort, in conjunction with a conversion kit it is preparing, will act as a practical catalyst to get the 800,000 or so SunOs users still out there onto the conversion road. It dismisses Hewlett-Packard Co’s competitive marketing against Sun (CI No 2,650) as just the usual 20% off thing. To strengthen its hand, DEC is planning some Sun-killer hardware announcements for July 30, the date that FreePort goes into unrestricted beta test, when DEC will make it available over the Internet.
