GTech Holdings Corp, the lottery systems integrator behind the winning Camelot Group Plc bid to run the British National Lottery, has snubbed the Digital Equipment Corp Alpha chip at the back end because it wasn’t sure that the chip would work. The West Greenwich, Rhode Island-based firm chose Alpha-ready DEC VAXes for the back end, but Donald Stanford, senior vice-president for GTech, said that We don’t want to go live with Alpha processors because they are too new. We are risk-adverse. He added that the firm wanted chips to be tried and tested for at least a year before it would consider them. The firm, which is using OpenVMS on the VAXes, chose not to use Unix for the system because it didn’t think the operating system would be able to handle the 300,000 transactions per minute that it expects from an initial 10,000 terminals. 80% of the terminals will connect to the VAXes over an X25 network, while the rest, which will be in remote areas, will hook in using Very Small Aperture Terminal satellite links. It will be installing four VAXes, to provide four levels of redundancy.
