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Actually school isn't that bad, but I mean, seriously, when I so meticulously prepare a policy speech on why the US gov. should repeal the DMCA, and I lose 45 out of 100 points for going overtime by two minutes and fifteen seconds, I feel like . . . dunno, moving to Switzerland. (Actually, I always feel that way. Odd.) Seriously, it's not optimal. Technically it's my own fault . . . but the people MUST KNOW!!
Oh yes and I am having much fun with my AlphaServer 1000A 5/400 I got from my boss for a PIII-1.1GHz and a Mac LSII. Pretty sweet deal, considering it came with 7 SCSI RAIDed hard drives (5 functional as of now) and enough SCSI controllers to handle about 53 SCSI devs. Tried Debian -- CD didn't even have a bootloader or else the image was corrupt . Gentoo panicked every hour or so, which was very annoying, plus disconcerting, 'cuz it's my favorite. I even tried Free- and NetBSD, but they complained that my DEC Tulip was unsupported, and an Alpha is pretty much useless to me without network. I was starting to run out of choices of distros on alpha when I tried Redhat 7.0. Works, but it's binary, and RPM too (duh) of all the atrocities. 2.2 kernel too. I'm thinking about "Linux-From-Scratch"ing it.
Oh yeah and since I now have some extra hard drive space on the alpha and I like to pretend I'm a netadmin or something, you nice people can have some ftp space if you so wish. I've got piddly DSL, so 30KB/s up/down if you're lucky but hey, free online storage is nearly impossible to find (in the quantities I'm offering -- how's a gig for starters? 2? ok). Of course, as of yet I promise no security, no uptime, no backups...yet. Eventually this thing will have a DDS-3, a newer kernel, encrypted filesystems, shell access . . .
Ah what palaces can false ambition build . . .
But seriously, if you want some FTP space, email daolpu@sesirpretnepluk.moc (obvious armoring, right?) and tell me how much/what you'd like and I'll work on it.
(Disclaimer, again: no promises.)
I oughta go to bed. I got about 3 hours last night. I know, I know, poor me. But really I am not used to it and I've been pretty retarded at work these last few days. Tell ya. Can't even tell the difference between a 3Com and an Intel NIC anymore . . . I oughta be fired.
"Hey hobo man, hey Dapper Dan..." -- Disney's Annie going through me head
Sounds liike you got a good deal
Alphas are cool....and double as convenient space heaters while operating! Perfect for colder climates.
Linuxiso shows Redhat available for the Alpha up to RH9. Check it out here.
Thanks
Well there is an image there for 7.2 (which is a 2.4 kernel release) but 9.0 shrike has no Alpha release as far as I can see. But thanks anyway, 7.2 is far better than 7.0.
This alpha actually runs pretty cool -- I put my hand on the power-supply vent and it's putting out considerably less heat than my Duron700 box -- but it's not under load and my Duron is (seventeenorbust).
One of my inexplicable ambitions is to know just about everything about some esoteric, obsolete, but extremely cool technology. I guess here's my chance. (Ha, ha.) Hey, anybody got a copy of VMS lying around?
--kulp
RH7.1
You might want to try RH 7.1, as it was the last official release.
7.2
Thanks, I just downloaded the 7.2 however. Maybe it's not "official"?
Debian
Debian Alpha Install Instructions
I didn't know that alphas allowed CD boots.
-molo
Perhaps it depends
Mine does. My understanding is that you can boot from any SCSI device on pretty much any machine. I could be way off, though. I know you can't boot from floppy on Jensen Alphas, but that's not a SCSI device, obviously. The aboot loader is what loads the kernel -- this page tells about it and how to make an alpha cd bootable, and your own link has a section telling how to boot from CDROM (http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/alpha/ch-rescue-boot.en.html#s-install-cd).
Thanks for the link, though. . . I think I'll be going to LFS, however, if I can't get Gentoo to work. Good learning experience too.
OpenBSD
Try Installing OpenBSD. They just released a new version and afaik they fully support alpha's, including the dec tulip network card.
Grretz,
Dan
I might
I kinda wanted to try OpenBSD, considering their fabulous security, stability, packetfilter quality, etc., but I didn't search long enough to find a bootable ISO and I was in a hurry to get it set up at the time. Does one exist? At least bootable to the stage of installing over network?
FreeBSD and NetBSD both claimed to load the drivers for my Tulip, but I think it was NetBSD that said it couldn't handle my particular card revision/model, 0x14 I think. If I find OpenBSD guarantees support for it (I'm lazy enough now not to just try it) I will certainly install it as I want to learn more about it.
--kulp
good news
OK, I just found out how to boot it -- there is actually a public ISO which is good because I have had absolutely no success booting from floppy previously, try as I might...
--kulp
Alpha ?
What's so god about that architecture ?
Never used anything but x86 :/
"Is your penguin 64-bit?"
Well there are a lot of good things about it; biggie is it's sixty-four-bit and always was. This is a server architecture started in something like 1992/3/somewhere in there (there is one laptop model and some desktops), and it was designed to last (/be upgradeable smoothly through) the quarter-century after its initial incarnation. It's also RISC, denoting a whole 'nuther chip paradigm. Has about nothing in common with x86 as far as architectures go. Any of the above (except perhaps 64-vs.-32) is a matter of personal preference mostly, and field of use. But IA32 and Alpha didn't really compete AFAIK.
So yeah now I have my 64 and I will not need to lust over an Athlon64 since I can't afford one anyway. If I have one gripe about it, it's that (well this is natural and by design, but) it's too transparent -- once I have Linux booted on it it looks, feels, and acts like any other computer with comparable Linux. I guess I'll have to run OpenVMS to get the full experience!
--kulp