It’s an Alpha
*BSD, Alpha, Hardware, Open Source March 27th, 2006Two weeks ago Jonathan collected his “new” Alpha – an AlphaServer 800. Of course, being the good chap he is, he promptly loaned it to me for a few weeks. It’s a nice machine: 500Mhz EV5 (21164a) CPU, 1GiB RAM, 2×9GiB SCA drives, CD-ROM and 4/8GiB DDS2 tape drive.
The machine was running FreeBSD 5.2.1, which I promptly replaced with NetBSD 3.0. Installation was fairly straightforward, once I had correctly identified the CD-ROM drive (the AlphaLinux SRM HOWTO is useful in this regard).
After using the machine for two weeks (and somehow destroying my only working Alpha in the interim), I decided to buy the machine from him for the price he paid for it (nice chap that he is, he agreed to sell it to me at no profit).
Now to get x.org working on it, with a good PCI video card (preferably something that supports two heads and DVI)…
March 28th, 2006 at 8:30 am
Cafe Java in Stadium on Main sells Radeon 7000’s (64mb) for R299. I bought one for a pci-based dual P-III 500 and it supports dual head with one DVI out as well.
March 28th, 2006 at 9:32 am
Ah, neat – thanks for the info. Was looking at getting a Matrox G400/450 or Radeon 7000 (or better) from eBay. Getting a card from Cafe Java will be quicker and probably cost me less