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I had thought that maybe API Networks could make a come back some time. But a goole search turns up the unresolvable www.alpha-processor.com and a domain registrar parking page at www.apinetworks.com. Does Samsung still have rights to the design after the f**ktards at Compaq/HP sold out to Intel? I wonder if one day we'll see an Alpha-compatible CPU on OpenCores.

moreover the current status of the Alpha port is doing quite well thank you and is the best supported port out there bar none. Please disregard this gentlemans comments regarding the fesibility of 2.4 on Alpha. Only a 'few' engineers have left Compaq to pursue other projects like the Athlon, HP is porting their own UNIX to Alpha, and the Compaq compiler team is alive and well working at Compaq in Nashua, NH on spitbrook rd. working on Alphas 'and' the Itanium compiler. Oh, Intel hasn't bought out Alpha, they only bought a 'license' to some of the EV8 core, thats it. I hope I've cleared up enough fud.

As for the situation regarding the orignal domain and hardware please see the following: list thread.

We don't intend to fade into the night. Not while I'm still around anyways :-). Oh I run debian unstable (which is anything but unstable) on my 600Mhz 164LX.

Peter

As others have pointed out the 2.4 kernel series has been painful on alpha. This is symptomatic of the fact that the alpha/linux community has died, completely. The two big alpha sites, Alphalinux (referenced in the article), and Alpha News have disappeared. I've been checking almost daily for months. In the last few months I've had a very hard time finding packages. I installed redhat 4 years ago, after a painful wrestling with the pre-release debian of the day. Now redhat 7.2 for alpha is still not out yet, despite the fact that it's been out for i386 since the beginning of October. Redhat sees the writing on the wall too. Their rawhide likewise hasn't seen a new package in a good while. Now I wish I had tried harder with Debian.

I've always hand-installed a lot of packages, but lately, since I can't find binary updates to redhat at all, I've been compiling more and more by hand. And lots of them don't compile. 64-bit cleanness is not something most programmers do by default. (hint: do not use long unless you really know what you're doing!)

It is ironic that in this day where everyone is anticipating the next great 64-bit chip (x86-64/Itanic), I am contemplating moving back to the 32-bit world, after using 64 bits for 4 years, because maintaining it is becoming a chore. DEC/Compaq/HP has really shot themselves in the foot. Between all their mergers and questionable "roadmap", they've alienated their fans, supporters, customers, employees, and even the Hewlett family. Their engineers left for AMD (and you wondered why the K7 was so much faster than the K6 -- buy Athlons!) their compiler guys and patents left for Intel (boycott Intel!), and there's little left of the original vision.

So all you tinkerers out there, I encourage you to buy up all the surplus Miata's you can find! And help the plight of Linux/Alpha and 64-bit clean code across the OSS landscape! Because 64-bit processors are going to become more prevalent, not less, and the world needs people on 64-bit machines to test stuff! (only about 5% of the packages I run into don't compile and run out of the box on alpha/linux -- but those 5% need to be fixed!) And everyone buy a USB PCI card for it too, because the current USB drivers suck! They can hang my kernel.

Oh, and an alpha makes a great firewall/router since all the script-kiddie buffer overflow hacks don't work. (all the script kiddies use buffer overflow attacks that insert x86 code onto the stack...this obviously doesn't work on alpha) A little bit of security through obscurity can help. But don't neglect real security!

--Bob

Woo-hoo! I love it when the speed of the internet manifests itself. It took under five minutes and a single e-mail.

The link listed in the article works now.

Massive props for being on the ball, guys!
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If you want to see Alphanews click the link.

No wonder its itching for eyeballs. Their site is not available at http://www.alphanews.net as the Slashdot article stated. I presume that they advertise that URL, but their second level domain nameserver doesn't seem to resolve it yet. But a simple http://alphanews.net works just fine.

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Jes' doin' what I can to encourage people to read the links before commenting on them...
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If you want to see Alphanews click the link.

No wonder its itching for eyeballs. Their site is not available at http://www.alphanews.net as the Slashdot article stated. I presume that they advertise that URL, but their second level domain nameserver doesn't seem to resolve it yet. But a simple http://alphanews.net works just fine.

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Jes' doin' what I can to encourage people to read the links before commenting on them...
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