[rescue] Itanium (v1 not 2) any use?

[jwb-tech at picarefy.com]

   We have a bunch of Itanium v1 systems at work. They're Intel engineering
samples and they're nasty. Beware of steppings below C0. At 700MHz, they're
very slow -- I don't have any numbers, but they seem slower than a PIII
of equivalent clock rate. We also have a four-way unit that nobody has
ever gotten stable enough to be useful so it mostly just sits in a corner.
Every once in a while somebody will get desperate because we don't have
enough Itaniums to go around and waste a day trying to use it.

   All of this is a shame because the chip itself seems interesting. I'm
sure there have been decent systems built with them, but not the ones
we're stuck with.

   --James B.