[rescue] Re: DEC Alphastation 255 & OS options

[Gregory Leblanc]

> From: Chris Hedemark <chris at yonderway.com>
> Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 22:27:08 -0400
> To: rescue at sunhelp.org
> Subject: [rescue] DEC Alphastation 255 & OS options
> Message: 14
> Reply-To: rescue at sunhelp.org
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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!  Run VMS!  I've got disk 2 of the 7.2.1 release for Alpha, but
I've lost all of my other VMS media.  I think that a license for Tru64
is still available free, just the media kit is $99, right?  VMS is
much, much, much cooler than Tru64, though if you'd rather stay Unix,
Tru64 is pretty cool.  Especially the newer versions, which have the
clustering ripped from VMS, pretty much wholesale (while VMS has the
Tru64 TCP/IP utils and some of the protocol stack).
      Greg