On Mon, 26 Aug 1996, John C. Hayward wrote:

> Dear Alpha People,
>    It looks like DEC is dumping some alphas and various vendors are selling
> these systems.  Does anyone have experince with the following system:
> =====
>  166 alpha (UDB by Digital Equipment)
> 21066 motherboard
> 256K cache
> 24MB RAM
> 2MB VRAM
> 340MB hard drive
> 1.44Mb floppy
> 1 PCI slot
> 2 PCMCIA slots
> 10baseT/10base2 ethernet on board
> 16 bit sound w/speaker on board
> PS/2 type keyboard
> 3 button mouse
> ====

This sounds like the Multia, which indeed runs NetBSD well.

> In particular does X run well on this machine (I guess the video is built 
> into the mother board).  Also it appears that there is built in SCSI for
> the hard drive but I cannot tell.

Yes X runs OK as does SCSI

> 
> Is 24MB enough space for a alpha (I know it is a RISC processor and has
> 64 bit words so my guess is it would take more memory than a 32 bit 
> processor).

It is low-end for an alpha, but it does work.. I thought I had to put 
more memory in it immediately, but so far I have managed with 24MB, just
running X with a few x-terms and single-process compiler runs.. and it's 
not very painful.

> 
> Does the current alpha port of NetBSD support PCMCIA cards - I would need to 
> have a modem (ppp) and know there are PCMCIA cards - I don't see serial on 
> the board.

No PCMCIA support.  If this is a Multia it has serial though..

> 
> I can get this system (without monitor) for $800 which seems like a good
> bang for the buck.  

Is this "computer guys"?  There was where I got mine from, and I have had 
no problems with mine.  However several other people in NetBSD land has 
also got systems from them with various success.  All in all, I've got 
the impression that they might not be the best ones on technical matters, 
but that they have been very helpful with replacement parts and guarantee 
trade-ins.. i.e no fuzz..

> I've used NetBSD on the i386 and pmax.

Then by all means you should run NetBSD on your alpha too, you'll feel
at home.

Niklas Hallqvist       Phone: +46-(0)31-40 75 00  Home: +46-(0)31-41 93 95
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