Subject: Re: Are PC164 based alphas supported?
To: None <ccsanady@scl.ameslab.gov>
From: Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com>
List: port-alpha
Date: 08/06/1997 13:40:04
>
>Must I do this?  The Digital Unix certified CPU's seem to cost twice as
>much.  The reason were going for the AlphaPC's though is that they are
>not very expensive.  With this increase in cost, it would be over our
>limit, and we'd be stuck with linux. :(

Oh, well. If that's what it costs, that's what it costs.

It's sacrilege for me to say so, but linux isn't all that bad,
although the latest linux/alpha port needs a bit of French Oak
aging and a bit of squinting and pinching of the nose while
swallowing...It's certainly better than Digital Unix, which
rivals Solaris for bloat- I think the image I'm happiest for
either Solaris or Digital Unix is: "The batter gets a really
good piece of the ball. Unfortunately, it always seems to
land 2 inches to the wrong side of the foul marker..."

In either case, if these particular boards won't run the SRM,
you're really ool.

>
>Also the vendor was saying that the SRM might not work with the newer
>lx based boards.  Any truth to this?

That might be the new lasered 21164 chips that have a hardwired dependency
(I believe) for the NT PAL code.

>
>Is there any way to hack around having to boot from a magical CPU?

It's all software (well, err, umm, 'f/w', or 'ucode' might be closer),
so, ultimately, yes.

For all practical purposes, no.

>
>Anyways, thanks for all the info..

Such as it was. "Minister for Disinformation" seems to be an
alternate job title for me.