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You may be referring to the VAX Environment Software Translator (VEST) and/or the Translated Image Environment (TIE) which were documented in Section 3.2.2.1 of the VAX to Alpha migration guide, but as far as I ever knew noone ever ran images that were translated with VEST for very long. Typically you would want to recompile your code from source so as to exploit the speed ups in the Alpha native compilers. Things like VEST were only for VAX *.EXE's that came with no source, and then only for desperados. Note that some things could not be VESTed, including things that may have made extensive use of the VAX only MTH$ run time libraries.

Well, the fact that the Compaq homepage only redirects to HP would be a biggie, I would think!

Indeed they did, you can see that here. Chapter 2 lists even the porting schedule to Itanium!

Sure. Test Drive is mostly intended for developers who want to port or test their code on platforms to which they might not otherwise have access. However, it is open to anyone. When you sign up, you get a free shell account on our systems which, so long as you obey the rules, you should be able to use indefinitely. We try to keep all our offerings up to date, and we're generally pretty responsive if you let us know about something you'd like to see in the program. You may also want to check our FAQ, or get in touch with us if you have more questions.

Sure. Test Drive is mostly intended for developers who want to port or test their code on platforms to which they might not otherwise have access. However, it is open to anyone. When you sign up, you get a free shell account on our systems which, so long as you obey the rules, you should be able to use indefinitely. We try to keep all our offerings up to date, and we're generally pretty responsive if you let us know about something you'd like to see in the program. You may also want to check our FAQ, or get in touch with us if you have more questions.

Sure. Test Drive is mostly intended for developers who want to port or test their code on platforms to which they might not otherwise have access. However, it is open to anyone. When you sign up, you get a free shell account on our systems which, so long as you obey the rules, you should be able to use indefinitely. We try to keep all our offerings up to date, and we're generally pretty responsive if you let us know about something you'd like to see in the program. You may also want to check our FAQ, or get in touch with us if you have more questions.

Sure. Test Drive is mostly intended for developers who want to port or test their code on platforms to which they might not otherwise have access. However, it is open to anyone. When you sign up, you get a free shell account on our systems which, so long as you obey the rules, you should be able to use indefinitely. We try to keep all our offerings up to date, and we're generally pretty responsive if you let us know about something you'd like to see in the program. You may also want to check our FAQ, or get in touch with us if you have more questions.

I have our Red Hat Test Drive system updated now to Red Hat 7.3. As always, accounts with us are free, and you get access to a number of different systems. Try out the latest releases of operating systems on our hardware before you commit it to your own!

I have our Red Hat Test Drive system updated now to Red Hat 7.3. As always, accounts with us are free, and you get access to a number of different systems. Try out the latest releases of operating systems on our hardware before you commit it to your own!

Check out something cheaper like Compaq Evo D300v. At $569, it's comparable to what you'd spend to build your own and it would be all new components. It even comes with Windows XP and a 1-year on-site warranty (can be extended to 3-years for $99 more). Other OEMs have similar packages available, but I'll use Compaq as an example since that's what I'm familiar with.

Why do I think that this is a better solution? Here's why:

1. It's pre-built and will save you the time and hassle of selecting, assembling, and testing components. Compaq has taken care of the problems of making sure that all the bits are ccompatible, so there's no headaches over wondering if the problem that you are experiencing is a hardware conflict or something else.

2. If something breaks, call 1-800-OK-COMPAQ and have them fix it. It's not your problem. That's much easier than trying to get a vendor or manufacturer to provide warranty service on a mainboard that died. More importantly, a component vendor or manufacturer might require you to ship components back and forth (if you're lucky, just cross-ship) before determining that there needs to be a warranty replacement. You're potentially looking at 2+ weeks to replace a faulty component. With an OEM like Compaq you can have the problem part replaced next business day. That's a big difference in a business setting.

3. If something breaks after you leave the company, your replacement will know who to call for assistance. They won't have to worry about checking warranty status on a widget and then getting a vendor to replace it. This offers peace of mind for the business principals.

4. If you need updated device drivers, they're all in one place at www.compaq.com. Locating and downloading softpaks is far more convenient than scouring the Internet for the latest versions of somebody's reference drivers.

5. If you want it, you'll have access to Compaq Insight Management Tools. You don't use anything like them now probably, and you may not in the future. But at least you'll have the option.

6. As far as system specs go, you'll get a 1.3GHz processor, 20 GB hard disk, an Intel NIC, 128 MB of RAM and decent integrated video and sound. The average office worker doesn't even come close to needing the power of a 1.3 GHz system. Sure you could get faster parts, but unless you're doing 3D modeling (in which case you're already shelling out $3000-$4000 for a high-end video card) or running intensive engineering or financial simulations you'll be OK for several years with what's included. Granted, you wouldn't want this on your desk at home for gaming but it's a pretty decent work machine.

7. Microsoft Windows is included. OK, a lot of people think that's not necessarily a good thing. But if you're going to be running Windows anyway, you might as well get it included so that you can be legal with it. Building your own PCs would prevent you from transferring your OEM licenses from the old machines to a new machine (legally speaking anyways).

In my opinion it's a no-brainer.

Don't mention that Air-port thing; no one bothered with that.

Yeah, no one but Dell, Microsoft,Compaq,
I think you get the picture...

Gotta love it when the AC trolls post drivel...

Yes it does.

RedHat Hardware Channels
http://www.redhat.com/marketplace/channel_hardware . tml
(among others, there are Dell, Egenera ..)

Linux Hardware
http://www.linuxhardware.org/

Linux at IBM
http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/

Linux at Compaq
http://www.compaq.com/products/software/linux/

It is a safe assumption that hardware from the 2 above manufacturer will be well supported, since they are supporting Linux heavilly.

Last but not least, make sure to read the Howto:
Linux Hardware compatibility HOWTO http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO/

Well, you could start with this $999 HMD and go buy a low-end $1109 laptop, and buy $400 of tech support to set it all up.

Whopsie daisy, looks like we've broken the bank.

(don't know about tru64.)

You can get a $99.00 Non-Comercial license for Tru64 from Compaq. You can get a three or four year old Alpha for about the same.

1368 wasted CPU's

Are you kidding? With the possible exception of Cray and maybe the Hitachi(can't find info on that one... they seem to be out of the supercomputer business), nobody builds single-unit supercomputers any more. The scalability with clustering and shared memory over high speed networking overcomes the contention problems with massively parallel processors, though the Numa-Q may let us put more cpus in a single box. Check out the AlphaServer SC, the RS/6000 SP, both supercomputers in the top 10 (with the SP dominating... awesome switch for the shared mem), and the Beowulf, or (no shared memory here), the Mosix, clustering. If I were building a linux supercomputer, I think i'd rather go with a pile of dual-cpu units anyway, cutting down on resource contention.

With distributed processing like these systems, adding another unit adds about another unit worth of processing power, whereas adding cpus to a SMP configuration gives diminishing returns. As long as you build the infrastructure along with the growth (add switch capacity), the sky's the limit.

People these days would just rather have "somebody else" do it for them in most aspects of their lives.

I understand completely, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. The days when one man could do everything himself are nearing an end. There were days when you could make your own tools, chop your own wood, build your own house, hunt all your own food, make your clothes (etc ad nauseum). Now, it is much more advantageous to specialize in one particular skill, and use it to everyone's advantage.

For instance, if you're a really good computer programmer, and you specialize so much that you get paid well for it, then your time is worth more to you as a programmer, than, for instance, building a telescope or computer. If you want to study some astronomy in your spare time, it would take weeks of your "spare time" to make your own telescope first. Whereas, you could spend that time working, bring home some cash, and buy a telescope, so you can focus on what you're really interested in.

Specialization is a direct result of the complexity of our culture. Personally, I love gaming and building PCs, I don't really have the time to sit down and put together my own operating system, so I get pre-made distributions, usually here.

Other people, however, may be so interested in spending time coding that they would rather not put in the effort to build their own PC. So, they buy one (from Compaq, Dell, or, if you have the money, Alienware).

Do I hate people who buy pre-made machines? No. The fact is, I build my PCs out of pre-made parts, so I'm just as guilty, but on a different level. I have no idea how to make a sound card, and frankly, I don't really want to know. (And, there may be some guy out there that DOES know how, and thinks everyone is stupid for buying pre-made ones from Creative).

Do you see where this argument goes?

For sure, the stuff IBM is doing is really awesome. I wasn't really disputing that fact. However, you have to admit other companies are doing a lot of things too. The way I look at it, they're strikers on the same team.

Try this. Okay, so it's not really minidisc, but it's mini-CD, which is cheaper and holds just as much. I bought this device when it first came out, and I absolutely love it so far. It doesn't play anything but WAV, CDDA, and MP3, but for the price, I can't really complain. The best part is the flexibility, though. Three little pocket-sized miniCD's will hold about 10 hours of music. And I think there's supposed to be mini-CDRW's on the horizon, which are slated to cost less than $2.00 each (which i'm sure will come down over time)...then you get the added value of being able to rewrite on the same discs, just like flash memory or minidisc.

I fully agree with you. Even with the alphacide, I think that there's life in the old dog yet.

It's being ported by compaq/intel to the ia64...

here.... and there's a free software clone being developed here

• Every commercially available OS with the exception of Windows and its incarnations are based at their core with Unix.

Am I falling for a Troll? Oh well, here goes...

BZZZT! Wrong!

Here's a short list of commercially available OSs that are not based at their core with Unix:

• OpenVMS
• z/OS, z/OS.e, OS/390, z/VM, VM/ESA, TPF, VSE/ESA (discount Linux on this link)
• OS/400
• mpe/ix (don't let the name fool you, it's not based on Unix)
• NonStop-UX (don't let the name fool you, it's not based on Unix)
• Others? I'm sure I'm missing some.

Thanks for playing, though!

• Every commercially available OS with the exception of Windows and its incarnations are based at their core with Unix.

Am I falling for a Troll? Oh well, here goes...

BZZZT! Wrong!

Here's a short list of commercially available OSs that are not based at their core with Unix:

• OpenVMS
• z/OS, z/OS.e, OS/390, z/VM, VM/ESA, TPF, VSE/ESA (discount Linux on this link)
• OS/400
• mpe/ix (don't let the name fool you, it's not based on Unix)
• NonStop-UX (don't let the name fool you, it's not based on Unix)
• Others? I'm sure I'm missing some.

Thanks for playing, though!

Compaq has some nice offerings. I'm working with their blade servers which, because of stringent space requirement are very difficult to do a traditional installation. as a token url, here's a link to some info on the subject from compaq. as a side note, compaq's blade aren't the most flexible in the world, but they look from a price/manageability perspective.

• Compaq
• HP
• IBM
• Silicon Graphics
• Sun

I would have liked it when I was at A&M if we ran Linux.

As far as "not buying the products", you tell me where to buy a Windows-free PC and I'll run there; oh wait, you guys are harassing white-box shops that do that, and you certainly won't be able to get one from the major companies like Compaq, HP, Dell, etc.

Some Dell models can be ordered preloaded with Linux

Look at:
dell.com/linux
compaq.com/linux
hp.com/linux
etc.

I wanted to build my own, but you just can't find all the parts for a two-node GS320 cluster on pricewatch.

... is Compaq.

I've probably set up over 100 servers over the last 10 years or so, and I wouldn't use anything but Compaq Array controllers. I've never lost data because of a drive subsystem problem. I've got over 20 that I'm responsible for now, and all of them use Compaq Array controllers. They are reliable, easy to configure, well supported, and easy to maintain. The tools under NetWare and Windows work well. Most are supported under Linux. They aren't cheap,but they are simply great.

For details look here.

I have worked for one large regional financial institution, and one large entertainment conglomerate, and one of the things they have in common is that both use Compaq hardware. There's a good reason - it works.

FWIW, I do not now, nor have I ever worked for Compaq, nor do I have any direct investment in Compaq.

Does anybody remember DEC's
Digital Network Appliance Reference Design aka "shark"?

Microsoft pressured DEC to not sell it - otherwise they would drop support for NT/alpha (which they did anyway...). See here for the details.

Sony comes close to looking good, until you realize the MX model (shown) starts at $2700. The other Sony computers are just the standard "beige-with-color-tints" which are popular with PC manufacturers now -- their half-effort imitation of Apple's first iMac.

I did find it a little strange in Showtime that they looped the PowerBook G4 ad on that TV set about three or four times, though. ;)

But you might consider saving up some cash and getting one of these. They start at $950, and you can get a very well equipped one for only about $1300. That's not a small amount of money, but it is certainly a excellent price/performance ratio.

All the world isn't Unix, you know. What are you going to do about those X clients that are running on systems on which your toolkits won't even compile (VMS comes to mind, outdated as it may be)? X isn't just supposed to be network-based, it's supposed to be platform independent, but this method of font handling is anything but.

The merits of font server vs client details notwithstanding you bring up a good point w.r.t. other proprietary systems and X fonts. The layout for fonts under X is outdated. The RENDER stuff in Xfree is very unlikely to be installed on a commercial unix (Tru64, HP-UX, AIX, SunOS, etc.). The situation reminds me a bit of Mac OS X: Apple never bothered building a display server for it and farmed the task out to one of their loyal ISV (Mach, formerly known as vendors of the MachTen BSD emulation on Mac OS).

As far as VMS is concerned: there have been only about two types of display servers for VMS. Freebies built in the POSIX environment (including ports of tvtwm et al). And the commercial DECWindows(tm) offering from DEC (er Compaq). The very latest DECWindows releases are stuck on Motif as in:

DECwindows xlib ident is DW T1.2-6010222 DECwindows OSF/Motif Toolkit ident is DW T1.2-6010222

Hint: To install X fonts on VMS use the FONT command. Unfortunately noone has yet ported XfreeAXP to VMS (yet).

With regard to the linked benchmarks, somehow I bet the benchmarkers at Tom's didn't compile parallel. Of course there is not going to be a speed improvement if you don't run a parallel make!

As someone who builds a small embedded Linux system from scratch (including gcc and glibc), a dual processor system is VERY nice. It cuts down the compile time by at least 30-40%. make -j2 is your friend with two processors.

Not that we have any Alphas to give away, but you can try out Debian running on a couple of Alphas in the Compaq Test Drive Program. We also have Red Hat, SuSE, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Tru64 Unix (formerly Digital Unix), and OpenVMS running on Alphas in the program, and though we cannot provide official support, we are always happy to respond to user questions and requests. Learn more about the Test Drive Program, see what we have running now, or sign up for an account.

Not that we have any Alphas to give away, but you can try out Debian running on a couple of Alphas in the Compaq Test Drive Program. We also have Red Hat, SuSE, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Tru64 Unix (formerly Digital Unix), and OpenVMS running on Alphas in the program, and though we cannot provide official support, we are always happy to respond to user questions and requests. Learn more about the Test Drive Program, see what we have running now, or sign up for an account.

Not that we have any Alphas to give away, but you can try out Debian running on a couple of Alphas in the Compaq Test Drive Program. We also have Red Hat, SuSE, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Tru64 Unix (formerly Digital Unix), and OpenVMS running on Alphas in the program, and though we cannot provide official support, we are always happy to respond to user questions and requests. Learn more about the Test Drive Program, see what we have running now, or sign up for an account.

To be precise when Digital came out with Alphas which could run NT the first model was the PWS (Personal Workstation) 500a. It featured the EV56 version of the Alpha chip which included byte-manipulation instructions to speed up stuff under FX!32 and generally to make the NT port simpler.

One of the key features of the PWS was that it had a "dual mode" BIOS, one was the SRM console which all old Digital OSF/1 hands will immediately recognise as the ">>>" prompt and the other was the AlphaBIOS which provided emulation of a PC BIOS services for the NT side. The 500a model only shipped with AlphaBIOS, the 500au shipped with SRM.

"Where can I find SRM?" is a frequent request on the tru64-unix-managers mailing lists, you might want to search the archives
to check if you can simply download and upgrade the firmware (it is freely available from the Compaq support web site). I seem to recall that this was not possible because the AlphaBIOS won't let you do it.

This quote is from page 15 of the OpenVMS at 20 publication that Digital Published in 1997. The PDF is available from Compaq.

During the cold war, VAX systems could not be sold behind the Iron Curtain. Recognizing superior technology, technical people cloned VAX systems in Russia, Hungary, and China. After learning that VAX systems were being cloned, DIGITAL had the following words etched on the CVAX chip, "VAX...when you care enough to steal the very best."

hopefully intel will reduce the size of this thing so the big three can get it into laptops that aren't the size (and weight) of a sack of this.

i don't believe the laptop market is filled to the brim with people who wear back-supports.

Actually, isn't this what Compaq is doing with their Test Drive Program? http://www.testdrive.compaq.com/os/ It's not quite a Compile Farm, but...

The 4 GB address space limit has become a severe limit on Java bloat. It's good to see that Sun finally addresses this problem.

Compaq already shipped a 64-bit JVM for their Alpha systems (running Tru64, OpenVMS, or something called Linux) a while back.

OpenVMS has the most robust, and fastest clustering ability I have ever seen . I just cant wait until linux can do this.

...or to be a bit more up to date, OpenVMS Clusters. (OpenVMS runs not only on the VAX hardware platform, but also Alpha, and soon IA64.)

...or to be a bit more up to date, OpenVMS Clusters. (OpenVMS runs not only on the VAX hardware platform, but also Alpha, and soon IA64.)

Alpha has no x86 compatibility, Itanic promises some.

This is actually an interesting perception issue. Itanium has hardware support for x86 and software support for PA-RISC. The original article attributes this to a lesser priority being given to PA-RISC. While that may be true, it may also be due to the PA-RISC customers having less of a "real PA-RISC" hardware vs. software hangup than x86 customers.

To go straight to tape you'll need at least 6 DLT drives, assuming you can keep the tape streaming and get 6Mbytes/s, and you balance them across a wide enough SCSI and PCI bus

Frankly, with all of the discussion centered around administering a machine that's at runlevel 0 or fully stealthed with no IPs, etc., I'm surprised that no one (so far) has mentioned hardware-based remote access products such as Compaq's Remote Insight boards (many other server vendors have similar products).

For ~$500 you get a board that replaces your keyboard, mouse, and video controllers, has its own built-in ethernet adapter (that is invisible to the rest of the computer - it's dedicated to remote access) and an SSL-secured web server. You can completely control the machine via a java applet. You can even cold-boot it if it's in a hung state (and, of course, view any errors on the screen while the machine's in a hung state). Other features include a virtual floppy drive that allows you to copy data to and from the machine (you can even boot off of the virtual floppy). There's plenty of additional coolness; the only downside is that Compaq cards only work in Compaq Proliant servers, HP cards only work in HP servers, etc...

Wouldn't hurt to max the machine out in SDRAM and add gig ethernet too.

Compaq makes them, HP makes them, as do a number of companies that are traditionally associated with the manufacture of SBCs and PC-104 type equipment.

If memory serves, my former employer found that the Toshiba laptop drives worked the best, except for some spindown problems that should be resolved by now.

One toy they built was the Factoid, a Peer-to-Peer information exchanging keychain dongle. It's about the size of a stick of gum, runs for a long time on watch-batteries, uses a short-range radio link, and trades things it knows with other Factoids, typically with data objects up to about 200 bytes long - business cards and that sort of thing.

The Research Paper ;