--- Doc <doc(a)mdrconsult.com> wrote:
On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, Ethan Dicks wrote:
Did the guy doing the OpenVMS port to the AXPpci133 ever get it working
enough to use?
I've sort of been wondering, since we're on AXP anyway, is anybody at
all still running Tru64 or NT on Alpha?
I never had Tru64 media. I do have NT 3.51 media for Alpha, but I've
never been interested in allocating a pile of brain cells to learn it
when I have other uses I'd rather put that much grey matter to.
Everyone I know who owns AXP runs either *BSD or
Linux or OpenVMS,
including me. NetBSD flat screams on the LX164.
Nothing screamed on my AXPpci133 until I found enough old cache chips
that the board liked. There's a list of "approved vendors" for those
cache chips... they aren't kidding... I had to try parts from four or
five old 486 motherboards to get a set of cache SRAMs that would let
the Alpha boot. Much happier now. Wish I had 1MB, but 256MB is lots
better than nothing. Can't complain, though. 4 or so years ago, I got
the board and a 166MHz CPU chip, no RAM, no cache, for $80. The RAM
was about $1/meg, a few at a time from Dayton. The cache was free,
eventually. I haven't done much with it, beyond get it up and running.
I don't think I even got a NIC working in it. I bought a real DEC
10BaseT NIC (DE405?) at Dayton, but I think I left it and the rest of
the stuff in that plastic bag on a vendor's table.
Until I have a pressing need for 64 bits, I will probably keep this
box at a low priority, but if any of the PDP-10 emulators would
rather be on a medium to slow-speed 64-bit machine rather than on a
medium to fast 32-bit machine, I might dust it off. I just don't see
where it's anything besides cool for the sake of cool right now.
-ethan
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