[rescue] DEC Alphastation 255 & OS options

[Dave McGuire]

On Thursday, October 10, 2002, at 10:27 PM, Chris Hedemark wrote:
> I got two of these wee beasties tonight.  266MHz, 64MB RAM, 9GB  HDD.  
> It is pouring rain now so they are still out in the car.  :-(   One of 
> them works 100% the other has some hardware issues so may be a parts 
> box or may be easily fixed, unsure at this time.

   Good score!  AS255s are nice machines.  You'll definitely want more 
than 64MB of RAM, though.  Alphas are very, very memory 
inefficient...primarily due to the data alignment constraints that they 
impose in the name of performance.

> Having done more *BSD & Linux than I care to talk about right now, I'd 
> like to maybe explore some other options.  Are there any other free 
> OS's that do right by this hardware?  These are my first Alphas so I'm 
> not terribly familiar with what works best on them yet.  I checked out 
> http://www.tru64unix.compaq.com/noncommercial-unix/ and unfortunately 
> they want enthusiasts to hand over $99 for Tru64.  :-/

   VMS!  8-)

     -Dave

--
Dave McGuire          "PC users only know two 'solutions'...
St. Petersburg, FL       reboot and upgrade."    -Jonathan Patschke