[PLUG] About alpha and what to do with mine...

AthlonRob AthlonRob at axpr.net
Mon Oct 6 22:50:04 UTC 2003


On Mon, 2003-10-06 at 21:22, Michael C. Robinson wrote:
> The largest application I ever used it for was programming in 
> PSU's 163 course.  I never used it for intensive mathematics 
> which is what it was designed for.  It has sixteen math units 
> on it.  Right now it runs Redhat 6.2.  It's a 366 mhz 21164A 
> with 64 megs of ram.  It requires 72 pin parity simms so it's 
> almost impossible to upgrade the memory.  That said, it works
> beautifully.  It's had very light use. 

*drool* ...

I want it!  :-)

> One thought is to 
> replace my 386 server with it so that I can do zebra where 
> I'm wondering if I can mirror my robinson-west.com site to 
> it along with my ftp site.  It has an old, probably ata-33 
> controller, but it can take 64 bit pci cards so I'm wondering 
> if there's a good scsi card I can get for it.  So far my 
> policy has been identical Pentium III systems, D815EEA2's 
> precisely, the 386 being the one exception.  My 386 is ultra 
> standard AMD and it works so that's why I've been using 
> it.  

I'm not totally sure how hardware works with processor architectures,
but the impression I've always had is as long as there are drivers for
the hardware that will compile under the architecture in question,
you're good to go... so, I *think* most SCSI cards should work for it.

> A 40 mhz 386 has a hard time generating 1024 bit keys 
> though where I doubt I can run Linux 2.4 on it so that I 
> can upgrade to iptables.  Don't know if debian would be
> best choice to upgrade Redhat 6.2 axp where I want to
> do dynamic routing with an existing RH 7.2 box as the
> other gateway to the Internet.

On a 386, you pretty much want to avoid any kind of encryption... even
just ssh keys can take upwards of thirty seconds to authenticate with. 
They're great packet routers, though!  :-)

A 386 should be able to do iptables with 2.4.22 without too many
problems... it won't do too much more, but it does iptables nicely.

> The hard disk on my alpha is a bit small, I run 80 gigs on
> my PIII gateway where the alpha only has a 2.5 gig drive.
> Anyone know how to install a monster drive to a 21164A?

Unless the case is something funny, it should be as simple as adding a
drive to any other system.  Just plug 'er in.  Although, I could see
maybe if the BIOS is different or something with the Alpha hardware?  I
haven't had the pleasure to play with any non-x86 hardware yet.  I'm
keeping my eyes peeled for some old Sparc hardware or something,
though.  :-)

FWIW, if I were putting Linux on the sucker, I'd go with Gentoo.  I
don't like RedHat or Debian, and Slackware's alpha port slipped back
into non-existence several months ago.. which doesn't leave a lot of
options open.  It sure would be slow compiling on that sucker, though.

Rob





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