Subject: Re: DEC 500a
To: Daniel Perry <d.perry@netcase.co.uk>
From: Jochen Kunz <jkunz@unixag-kl.fh-kl.de>
List: port-alpha
Date: 05/14/2002 10:40:08
On 2002.05.14 02:42 Daniel Perry wrote:

> Does anyone know anything about the dec alpha 500a?
I have a 500au, the "UNIX version" of that machine type. (The 500a is
the same but soled with WinNT.) My machine is runing Tru 64 UNIX and it
is my main work machine. A modern PeeCee may have a faster CPU, but when
it comes to do multiple jobs concurrently, especially with IO load, this
five year old machine runns circles around a PeeCee. 

NetBSD will run _very_ fine on that machine, although you may stumble
over the build in 100MBit/s Ethernet. Use the tlp(4) driver instead
de(4) and it will Just Work (TM). X may be a bit problematic without the
already supported DEC cards, but it seams that XFree is on the way...

I payed around 500,-EUR for it. It had a 4GB SCSI HDD, 192MB RAM and the
monstrous 4D50T graphics card. Later I spent 140,-EUR for additional
512MB RAM and some EUR for a DEFPA... A really good investment. 
-- 



tschüß,
         Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/