Well yesterday I scored an Alphaserver 2000 4/200 at the First Saturday Sale for $20. You can see some pics of it here. http://www.redrouteone.net/alpha
It has a single 190MHz CPU and is upgradeable to 2 CPUS. It has 128MB of RAM and is upgradeable to 1GB but to do that would require 64 16MB 72pin SIMMS. It has no drives in it and I am kind of disappointed in that. I forgot to check to see if it had in it when I was buying it, though I did literally buy it off of the back of a truck at 4am.
I plan on running OpenVMS on it, though I will load Windows NT 4.0 just for the hell of it.
OpenVMS looks pretty nice, but take a look at NetBSD
http://netbsd.org/Ports/alpha/
There is an excellent OS 9 emulator, BasiliskII.
And, of course, lots of other good stuff:
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/pkgsrc/README-all.html
(I thought I'd get my 2cents in before someone suggested Linux)
(Hmm, lots of 68kMLA/AppleFritter x-posts today!)
I always kind of thought that BSD vs. Linux thing was a waste of breath. It's like arguing over OS X vs. OS 9. There's a bigger battle out there: Open Source vs. Proprietary. Or OSS vs. MicroSoft. Or Mac v. Windows!
BSD and Linux both have essentially the same end goal, right? It's just the approach that's different.
Anyway, we installed Red Hat on a 500 MHz Alpha Server back in my intern days. It worked great ... after we got the boot manager working... That required LOTS of calls to Red Hat support.
Peace,
Drew
Well when it comes down to it Tru64/Solaris/AIX/IRIX/BSD/Linux and the other unixes all just unix. You just one and you have pretty much used them all. Sure there are diffeneces between them all but you get past those pretty quick. That is why I want to use OpenVMS, that is quite a bit different and I should be able to learn lots of new things there.
I am waiting for my application to the HP encompass user group to be accepted so that I can get my hobbyist OpenVMS license. In the mean time I am tring to find somewhere that I can download images of the OpenVMS media. I really don't have $30 to spend on it.
Right now I am messing with getting Windows NT to install and not having much luck. For some reason arcinst.exe won't see my hard drive.
I really think Linux is quite different than BSD, different goals (does linux even have a goal?), different optimized applications... I just can't see why every one wants a linux server when, compared to others, it networks like a snail... I like the card metaphor, where BSD is poker, and Linux is pokemon, sure the colors are kewl, but you can't win any money.
I've never seen OpenVMS, but I know that it is POSIX compliant... how different can it be? I'll gamble that I have much to learn and see.
And I think the proprietary vs open source battle is clearly being won by open source... now, a little organization, please (How many licences are there? 50??)
Is it a problem that there is all this free software developed by very smart people that take years to learn what they know, and its just given away? Not that I'm complaining, but... those guys deserve big salaries, and if free software is killing proprietary software, where is the money coming from?
I wonder where the money comes from, too. My guess is that they do it for free as a hobby or 'community service.' After all, even though many programs 'work.' they are always being improved.
God BLESS them... for they are selfless...
and, truly, money, I am so sick of the talk of money (even though I brought it up).
It can be psychologically paralyzing.
Also, working on an OSS project and having your name in the contributors list solves the paradox of "you can't get a job without experience and you can't get experience without a job."
I like the score that you got!! (the alphaserver).
I would love to see pics of the innards and of the 64 simms slots. LOL
It won't handle 32 or 64 meg 72 pin simms?
According to the manual only 4mb or 16mb will work. Click on the link in my orginal post I have pictures of the insides. Right now I only have 1 memory card so I only have 32 Simms slots but you can buy a second card which would give you 64 slots.
These Alphaservers are a different beast than your PC type machines. It is built like the PDP/11s and Vaxen in that every subsystem is on its onw card and plugs onto a back plane. Which is really cool. Gives you much better fault tolerence and upgradeability.
My main question is is it a microcomputer or a minicomputer? Also does it qualify as "Big Iron".
I wouldn't call that big iron, but it's getting pretty close.
Whooops, missed your linky in the first post.
Awesome looking system. Do you need more ram? I might be able to dig up a bunch of 16 meg simms at work that are doing nothing but going to waste.
It looks a lot like my Digital Prioris ZX 6000MP server. Mine has 4 Pentium Pro 200mhz/512K cache processors, 512 MB RAM in those lovely 72-pin SIMM modules.
I've set up Mandrake Linux 9.1 on it at one time, but for some reason it doesn't like Mandrake 10.0. Currently it's running Windows 2000 Server.
The drives are 80-pin SCA drives in drive modules. A local computer store here in Raleigh, NC has gobs of them with 4.3 GB drives in them.
The movie link gives me a 404 on your site. I'm curious to see what it says!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_iron
You are close.
Here's how I classify them:
Ginormous cluster/huge mainframe: Super-Iron
Mainframe: Big Iron
Server: Iron
Desktop PC with internal expansion slots: Little Iron
Laptop or desktop w/ PCMCIA: Jr Iron
Laptop or Desktop w/o internal expansion slots or PCMCIA: Sub-Iron
Laptop-form factor PDA (eg: eMate): Tiny Iron
Standard-form PDA w/ CF, SD or PCMCIA: Paperweight
Standard-form PDA w/o expansion: Pebble
Graphing Calculator/Computer watch: Dust Bunny
Did I miss anything?
Fixed it.
If they are parity simms that would be great.