Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1996 10:35:32 -0500 (EST) From: Mark Mayo <mark@quickweb.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: Chuck Robey <chuckr@glue.umd.edu>, jehamby@lightside.com, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD/Alpha (was Re: COMDEX trip report) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.94.961201101157.23827A-100000@vinyl.quickweb.com> In-Reply-To: <1195.849413695@time.cdrom.com>
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On Sat, 30 Nov 1996, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > Oh? Something you heard at Comdex? Now that's interesting! > > Yes, keep your eyes on the ALPHA/PC market. I just picked up a 500MHz > ALPHA Durango system with 128MB of memory and all the trimmings for > just over $5K. If I'd wanted a slightly smaller drive or less memory, > I could have come in well under this. That's quite a lot of machine > for not a lot of money. Just as a side note, check out NekoTek as well (www.alphapower.com). They tend to be very cheap - a year ago they were even less expensive than Aspen and Micro Way. I'm not sure if that's the case anymore... And keep your eyes no Digital's "Personal Workstation" line - they all ship with the CPU/chipset on a daughter card, so you can swap out your PPro and boot with an Alpha :-) I have a development model right now, and it's damn fast even with a PPro plugged in.. > > > > 1) Dead architecture. :-) > > > > That sounds a _little_ harsh. > > I only believe what I read in PowerPC News - You know, that > publication that closed its doors with a dirge in the last issue for > the PowerPC architecture, citing insufficient interest even among its > most principle sponsors (IBM / Motorola) and a failure to live up to > all the promised increases in performance these last 3 years. > I'm curious, has the "PowerPC Platform" spec been released now?? I know it has been long awaited since it's suppose to finally open up the PowerPC clone market, and provide a standard for multiple OS machines... And can you buy one of these machines yet? Also, has anyone heard anything from Exponential Technology lately? Are they actually going to pull it off?? The last I heard they were predicting the first chip to appear in 2nd quarter 97 running at 300-400 MHz, promising a 500MHz by late 97 / early 98. Are they on track? When I checked 2 months ago, they still hadn't put any of the design to silicon (or galium arsenide I suppose forthe bi-polar logic). Also, did anyone ever figure out what they were doing with that patent that let them share instructions sets in registers? The press seemed to think they were working on hardware emulation for the x86 (making it a PPC 615 decendant I guess) or the 680x0 . They seem to be the only company offering anything interesting in the PowerPC line these days... I'm just not confident that it will happen. If the breakthroughs happen with the PowerPC (Exponential, 500 MHz, PowerPC Platform, BeBox) it could be a worthwhile chip to support. Until then, however, I think I'd like an Alpha port of FreeBSD! The Alpha is the fastest chip, and don't think they're about to stand aside and let some upstart PowerPC manufacturer to shoot past them ;-) Also, considering DEC's recent attempts to get into bed with Microsoft, and the pressure now being placed upon NT for "only being 32-bit", I think the Alpha may be well on it's way to becoming a competitor in the 'PC' world =) Of course, if I could boot between MacOS, BeOS, AIX, NT, Linux, (?FreeBSD?) on a PowerPC Platform machine, I'd definately own one of those! One more thing: wasn't Terry doing something with FreeBSD and PowerPC's ? cya, -Mark --------------------------------------------------- | Mark Mayo mark@quickweb.com | | RingZero Comp. vinyl.quickweb.com/mark | --------------------------------------------------- "To iterate is human, to recurse divine." - L. Peter Deutsch > The BeBOX is quite interesting, but not because of its dual-PowerPCs; > it's interesting because of the other hardware within it and its > operating system. > > Jordan >
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