> AlphaStation 255, 233Mhz 21064A, 1M cache, pci/isa slots, Onboard ethernet, 
> Onboard sound,Onboard scsi, the newlookin case, cdrom player, NT media 
> (you can get Digital Unix instead, but that costs more, No OS option 
> doesn't seem to exists). All this for $1668 if your a "edu",  $2690 
> else. [ ... ]

Yeah, the SBB price is rather nice.  We're probably going to be
ordering a boatload.  (We've had specs on them and the '500s for a
while before they were announced, and have been drooling...  8-)

The 255 really boils down to:

	AlphaStation 250 + one extra PCI slot


the 'newlookin' case isn't so newlookin' -- i've had one of them here
on my desk for a long time now (well over 6 months) in the form of an
AlphaStation 200.


> My concerns are firmware,scsi,ethernet if they are supported...

As far as i know, answer to all of these is yes.

Apparently, one of the groups here is getting one of them a few days
after 3/25, and which point i'm going to try and drop a NetBSD/Alpha
disk on it, and will post results.


The firmware should be the standard AlphaStation firmware, which
includes PALcode for OSF/1, OpenVMS, and NT.  That means that NetBSD
should go just fine.

The standard ethernet and SCSI on the 21064A-based Alphastations are
all the same: dc21040 ethernet, ncr53c810 SCSI.  They work fine.

My only question -- and I won't know until i get the hardware to play
with -- is whether or not DEC did anything special with the interrupt
mapping.  My guess is that they did, and the at least one of the slots
(the new one 8-) won't work right with the current sources, but
there's only a finite amount of trial and error necessary to figure
out what's up, and i've done that before...


Remember: if you get a VGA board for video, X won't support it for a
while...




chris