Subject: DEC 3000/700 and NetBSD
To: None <port-alpha@netbsd.org>
From: Rowdy <rowdy@netspace.net.au>
List: port-alpha
Date: 02/11/2006 19:11:58
Greetings,

I have recently acquired a DEC 3000/700 in reasonable condition (as far
as I can tell it has been hardly used, and "stored" for most of the past
10 years).  It has a 21064A 225MHz CPU, 64M RAM, two RZ26L (1.05G) HDD
and a RRD43 CD-ROM drive.  The firmware is revision 5.1 and the PALcode
indicates OSF version 1.35.  This info comes from the dmesg of OSF/1
V3.2A that is currently installed.

There is no monitor or keyboard attached directly to the machine, but it
currently boots quite happily with a serial console attached.

Question 1: Currently the machine is not Y2K compliant, and I suspect
this is the operating system that is on there now.  Is there likely to
be any issue in the area of Y2K compliancy on this machine with NetBSD?

I have been working with NetBSD/cobalt recently, and there have been
mutterings on the mailing list of instability in 3.0, and even with 2.1,
so some NetBSD/cobalt users are preferring to stick with 1.6.x.

Question 2: Has anyone experienced any instability or problems with
NetBSD 3.0 on the alpha architecture?  If so, would it be safer to stick
with an older version, say 2.1, or perhaps 1.6.2?

Question 3: the INSTALL.txt on the 3.0 alpha install CD notes that the
Turbochannel DEC LANCE ethernet card is "UNTESTED" - has anyone
experienced problems with this network card?

Many thanx for responses or insights - hopefully NetBSD/alpha is as much
fun as NetBSD/cobalt and NetBSD/sparc :)

Rowdy