From owner-freebsd-alpha Thu Jul 8 2:56:20 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Received: from herring.nlsystems.com (nlsys.demon.co.uk [158.152.125.33]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7A02414C14 for ; Thu, 8 Jul 1999 02:56:14 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dfr@nlsystems.com) Received: from salmon.nlsystems.com (salmon.nlsystems.com [10.0.0.3]) by herring.nlsystems.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA88392; Thu, 8 Jul 1999 10:56:04 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from dfr@nlsystems.com) Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 10:56:03 +0100 (BST) From: Doug Rabson To: Mark Holloway Cc: alpha@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Alpha 500a ok? In-Reply-To: <000c01bec8ed$1dd8bba0$eb3bea18@lvcm.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Wed, 7 Jul 1999, Mark Holloway wrote: > Hi FreeBSD/Alpha people.. > > I have been using FreeBSD on intel (PII/333/128MB RAM) and it is > great.. I was looking at getting another machine to act as a personal > server on my home network and maybe eventually into a production > environment. For the money, I could spend around $1200 and build a > PII/450 machine but a friend of mine who is a used Sun/SGI/DEC/IBM > reseller has a DEC Alpha 500a (21164 Generation) Personal Workstation > with 128MB Ram, DEC 16MB PCI Video, 4GB SCSI, and CD-Rom for $1400. > The thing that I like most about this box is that it has 2MB cache > versus Intel's 512k (unless you get a Xeon, but that's a lot more than > $1400). > > Some people have asked me why I'm looking at Alpha and not Intel. > Right now I have an Intel/FreeBSD machine at home and it works great. > However, I've always looked for the best "bang for the buck" and $1400 > is a pretty low price to pay for the Alpha and I feel the components > are built better. The SpecINT on the Alpha 500 is still higher than > any other used RISC based machine in this price range (Sparc 20, SGI > Indy, all with SpecINT around 2.5 -> 4.5). > > Does anyone know of any issues or quirks with the Alpha 500a machines? > Or are they pretty stable? I have an older model (the 433au) and it works well. I think that all of the PWS series work with FreeBSD/alpha. -- Doug Rabson Mail: dfr@nlsystems.com Nonlinear Systems Ltd. Phone: +44 181 442 9037 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message