Yep, it’s true - it takes longer to build Firefox 2.0 than it does to build 1.5. Timings on a 500Mhz EV56 AlphaServer 800 running NetBSD:
real 612m43.097s
user 534m11.005s
sys 80m52.159s
Contrast those with my previous results and you’ll see that it takes about 4 minutes longer to build 2.0. It’s bloat I tell you 
Saw this mail on the FreeBSD alpha list a few days ago - unfortunately it seems as if support for the Alpha architecture will be phased out with FreeBSD 7.0.
From John Baldwin:
Alpha was the first non-x86 port that was added to FreeBSD, and as such it has greatly aided the efforts to keep FreeBSD from being too i386-centric. However, recently the Alpha port has not had any active development or maintenance.
...
After considering all of this, it is time to part with Alpha for 7.0 and beyond. At this time it is still planned to provide 6.x releases for FreeBSD/alpha. The code will still be around in CVS history if someone suddenly shows up and fixes a bunch of bugs and/or the architecture is revived. ...
I certainly hope someone steps up to take care of FreeBSD/alpha, as it would be sad to see it consigned to the history books. I’ve never used FreeBSD/alpha seriously (my Alphas run NetBSD), but the more choice there is available in the open source arena the better.
Today I had to rebuild Mozilla Firefox due to the release of 1.5.0.2. Unfortunately, due to my choice of platform (NetBSD/alpha), I have to build my own binary from scratch and can’t just do a delta binary update. The build timings on a 500Mhz EV56 AlphaServer 800:
real 608m54.243s
user 507m15.788s
sys 77m30.249s
Yes, it took 10 hours to build a web browser…
After putting up with it for a few weeks, I decided to replace the rather noisy boot drive in my AlphaServer 800, a DEC firmware 9GiB Seagate Cheetah (DEC RZ2DD-LS). The noisy drive, a 10,000rpm third generation ST39102LC, sounded like somebody burping next to me (yes, it was that loud). Of course, in my infinite wisdom, I replaced it with another drive of the same model (albeit with IBM firmware). My thinking was that the DEC firmware drive was “just noisy” and that the IBM firmware drive, being manufactured more recently, would be quieter. In retrospect, I have no idea what I was thinking, and the replacement drive is just as noisy. Unfortunately I don’t have any spare 10,000rpm SCA drives lying around, so I’ll just have to live with the burping Cheetah…
Went by a buddy of mine today to drop off some IRIX CDs and while I was there he passed along two more machines he’d rescued: a DEC Multia and a Sun Ultra 1.
The Multia is a low-end machine (my one has a 166Mhz Alpha CPU, 24MiB RAM and a 350MiB 2.5″ SCSI drive), but it’s still pretty neat. The small size, two PCMCIA slots and single PCI slot can make it into quite a neat wireless access point or broadband router. I’m having a little difficulty getting the SRM console to display on my el-cheapo test monitor (ARC works fine), but I’ll dig out a better monitor for testing tomorrow and then try and boot NetBSD on it.
The Ultra 1 (these things seem to be falling from the sky these days) is a non-E model with a dead CPU fan and no disks. The case is in good shape though and I think it should be pretty easy to get it into working order.
Ultra 1 PROM banner (note the ancient version!):
Sun Ultra 1 SBus (UltraSPARC 167MHz), No Keyboard
OpenBoot 3.0, 128 MB memory installed, Serial #7999316.
Ethernet address 8:0:20:7a:f:54, Host ID: 807a0f54.
As part of my ongoing project to get XFree86 working on a NetBSD/alpha system with a commodity PCI video card, I need to do a native build of XFree86. PR 29882 explains why the XFree86 X server is not included by default in the NetBSD release engineering releases, hence the need for my native build.
One slight potential fly in the ointment is that all my NetBSD source trees are stored on my source server and mounted read-only via NFS on the systems that need it. To build XFree86 with a read-only source tree requires a little trickery, but the procedure is nicely explained in the Building XFree86 from a Source Distribution guide (see page 3 onwards). The idea is to create a shadow tree containing symlinks to all the files in the original tree and using that to build instead of the original tree. It’s quick to set up and works very well.
Now to get a decent PCI video card…
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about XFree86 on NetBSD/alpha, I was pointed in the direction of these two very useful references:
It seems like a lot of commodity PCI video cards Just Work(tm) with XFree86 in Alpha systems, but just for safety’s sake I think I’ll stick with one of the known good cards. PCI Radeon 7000s can apparently be had for R300 (about $45) from a local computer reseller - I’ll go and check them out tomorrow and probably pick one up. Getting the card locally will probably cost the same as eBaying one, but it’ll certainly be a lot quicker.
Two 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)…
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