>:::
> After looking at the specifications for the mother-boards in some
> boxes, as well as the peripherals, it seems that NetBSD on a newer,
> current production, reasonably fast, inexpensive alpha is something
> that doesn't exist.  Or maybe it does, and I'm just not putting
> the right pieces-parts together to know that it is really supported.
>
> To give a concrete example, I'm looking at one of Microway's
> 21164 bases systems.  They have an LX164 MB (or perhaps a variant
> for the 8MB cache systems).  They have some unknown (to me) SCSI
> controller, video card, and ethernet that I'm trying to track down
> at the moment.  The NetBSD pages imply that a older version of
> those boards are supported, but not the current models.  I'm waiting
> on Microway to see what boards they actually provide, instead of
> generic "xxx card" listings to see what is supported.  The big problem
> here seems to be the ITS3140U scsi controller.
>
> I've also looked at some other Alpha resellers, and the condition
> seems similar ... random parts that appear not supported by NetBSD,
> which only seems to really run well on hardware produced by DEC.
> I have no problem with DEC hardware, I would love to have some!
> But, I can't afford it.
>
> So, is this Microway system supported by NetBSD?  Or, is there some
> reseller of modern Alpha hardware that will supply a system that
> has the components needed to run NetBSD on it?
>:::

I do believe that the intraserver 3140 is based on the "ncr" 53c875 scsi
chip, which is actually sort of our "standard" host adapter.

It's true that PeeCee hardware changes very rapidly; fortunately, the
*other* alpha os kernels don't, so as a general rule netbsd alpha supports
the currently popular-on-alpha pci cards and such.

Actually, the central question you really need to ask is: does it come with
srm or can you get it?   If the hw supports tru64, then it does have srm.
if it supports linux, then it probably has srm. NT uses a different console
that, in general, none of the unix kernels run on.

	Ross