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Subject: Re: DEC Alpha Multia
To: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 13:01:29 +0100 (MET)
Cc: freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com (user alias)
In-Reply-To: <9503241735.AA09749@cs.weber.edu> from "Terry Lambert" at Mar 24, 95 10:35:51 am
From: Christoph Kukulies <kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de>
Reply-To: Christoph Kukulies <kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de>
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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