Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 13:01:29 +0100 (MET) From: Christoph Kukulies <kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de> To: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert) Cc: freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com (user alias) Subject: Re: DEC Alpha Multia Message-ID: <199503251201.NAA21735@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de> In-Reply-To: <9503241735.AA09749@cs.weber.edu> from "Terry Lambert" at Mar 24, 95 10:35:51 am
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>
> > > Anyone thought about a port of FreeBSD to the DEC Alpha processor? The
> > > new Multia machine seems to offer good value for money hardware (166MHz
> > > 64bit Alpha processor, 24Mb RAM, 340Mb SCSI-2 HDD, PCI bus, and Ethernet
> > > for $3000)
> > >
> > > Perhaps the BSD consortium could fund a development machine if we had a
> > > volunteer to do the port?
> >
> > There is a NetBSD port to the APX architecture.
^^
xp (applied here as a vi command, please)
Sorry, typo on my side. How could I...
>
> This is for the DEC AXP150.
>
> An EISA machine with an Adaptec 1742 controller; there is supposedly
> no X support, and a number of other problems.
>
> There is, however, the basic code for the Alpha processor with the OSF
> Alpha microcode, and *significant* work on many parts of the 4.4 system
> to make it 64 bit clean.
>
> On the other hand, EISA is being replaced by PCI and the AHA1742 is a
> dead piece of hardware (so is the AXP150, for that matter).
>
> The new DEC Alpha PCI motherboard ($1170 from DEC Direct), although it
> wants PS/2 style SIMMs (bletch) and the default microcode requires 16M
> of memory, seems a much better deal.
>
> There is a DEC-available-to-askers-only microcode update disk that
> allows it to run with only 8M (still the OSF microcode otherwise) and
> in fact, Linux is already booting from floppy on this hardware
> configuration (the guy doing the work lives about 17 minutes away
> from me).
>
>
> Personally, I would prefer that at *least* kernel multithreading and
> *preferrably* SMP support were in prior to ossifying the kernel and VM
> structures into multiple architectures which would then have to be
> individually retrofitted as interface changes were made to put them in.
>
> In the limit, I think it possible that the job might become to large
> to *ever* tackle otherwise.
>
>
> Terry Lambert
> terry@cs.weber.edu
> ---
> Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
> or previous employers.
>
--Chris Christoph P. U. Kukulies kuku@gil.physik.rwth-aachen.de
FreeBSD blues 2.1.0-Development FreeBSD 2.1.0-Development #0: Wed Mar 22
04:54:59 1995 root@blues:/usr/src/sys/compile/BLUESGUS i386
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