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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