RE:looking for a server

[mel kravitz <melk%switchpwr.com@localhost>]

I think if you loaded (or tried) NetBSD over the past 10 years on a 
variety of alpha's your experience would be quite mixed.
For me the BWX boxes run best, at the moment i have several in service 
with 1.5,1.6, 2.0, 4.9.45 and all up for > =200+ days.
except for the 4.99.45( ~90 days). Only hardware issues bring these guys 
down. My DS10, ES40, and ES45 experience has been
a disaster with NetBSD. I could not even get the ES45 to run it. My 
boxes are wireless bridge servers, web site servers and mail servers. My 
personal computer is:
NetBSD 4.99.45 (GENERIC-$Revision: 1.320 $) #0: Wed Dec 26 13:39:07 EST 2007
root@casey103:/home/mel/src/sys/arch/alpha/compile/obj.alpha/NEW

Digital AlphaPC 164LX 599 MHz, s/n 
8192 byte page size, 1 processor.
total memory = 1024 MB
this box has a scsi dvd player as well as FW CD burner both work well for 
me,threaded programs run just fine for me.
I use ath0 wireless and ral0 cards( expect the same problems as on the i386 in 
NetBSD). I use alpha because of 'STABILITY'.
As far as speed is concerned,my BWX 164LX is faster than a dual core intel XP 
box,once the XP box is fully loaded with M$ software
and other crap that most users put on these boxes.At work people running XP 
think slow to open programs is the normal computer experience.
my CD info:
scsibus0: waiting 2 seconds for devices to settle...
scsibus1: waiting 2 seconds for devices to settle...
ieee1394if0: New S400 device ID:00d04b0111148008
sbp0 at ieee1394if0: SBP-2/SCSI over IEEE1394
scsibus2 at sbp0: 1 target, 0 luns per target
cd0 at scsibus2 target 0 lun 0: <PIONEER, DVD-RW  DVR-103, 1.65> cdrom removable
ral0 at uhub0 port 2
ral0: Ralink 802.11g WLAN, rev 2.00/0.01, addr 2
fd0 at fdc0 drive 0: 1.44MB, 80 cyl, 2 head, 18 sec
ral0: MAC/BBP RT2570 (rev 0x03), RF RT2526
ral0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps
ral0: 11g rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 
36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
cd1 at scsibus0 target 2 lun 0: <PIONEER, DVD-ROM DVD-305, 1.06> cdrom removable
cd1: sync (50.00ns offset 16), 8-bit (20.000MB/s) transfers
sd0 at scsibus1 target 1 lun 0: <SEAGATE, ST336607LW, 0006> disk fixed
sd0: 35003 MB, 49855 cyl, 2 head, 718 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 71687372 sectors
sd0: sync (50.00ns offset 16), 16-bit (40.000MB/s) transfers, tagged queueing
I burn CD's using xcdroast no problems,mplayer builds with gcc-3.6, your 
desktop can be as bloated as you want since large scsi drives are cheap and 
readily available.
my various desktops, gnome2.2.18, xfce4.3 and kde3.5:
http://www.caseydoodle.com/index1.html