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Compaq has released the compilers on linux now, which is a good short-term help. In the long run, gcc still needs to get up to speed for the platform, of course. This is an issue on all RISC architectures - all those lovely registers don't do much good if the compiler doesn't know about them.

For a replacement board you might try DGC - it's the only discount outlet for Alpha hardware I know about at the moment. They don't seem to be advertising the boards, but they do make their own, give em a call, it can't hurt. This guy in england sells boards, prices look real high though. You might check usenet too...

Yeah, Alphas are the likely competition for this crowd. Intel and AMD offerings have made a lot of advances, and the price is always great because of economies of scale, but for real workstations they still aren't real competitive. The Alpha, on the other hand, can stand toe to toe with SPARC and win. There are still reasons to buy Sun, of course, but only if you are talking about a really big box, say over 16 processors, running Solaris, not Linux. Linux performs a lot better than Solaris on uniprocessor boxes, but those 100 processor monster servers are better handled by Solaris still - that's what it's designed for.

And they are cheaper, best I can tell. About 3k sounds right for a base config - where do you see Suns cheaper than that? DCG is AFAIK one of the cheapest sources for SUN or Alpha hardware, their DCG L-1 with 128MB SDRAM 15.2GB storage, 600 Mhz Alpha, 2 MB Cache and all the other junk you expect on a Workstation (fast graphics, cdrom, NIC, etc.) sells for $3,850. Their Sun line starts at $3,595, with 9GB storage, a wimpier vidcard, and a 366mhz processor.

I called my usual alpha dealer (it's been a while since I have had to talk alphas) to get prices for a mobo+cpu+ atx rackmount case, and was told that compaq had decreed an end to ATX form factor systems

Otoh, they support linux but not Tru64 (no Tru64 PALcode)...

I HIGHLY recommend doing this if you're a little hardware savvy (like to tinker), and are fed up with Intel's crap (like me). But then again there's always the Athalon. But then again the alpha still beats the Athalon at floating point.

The DCG people have been very good to me as well. When I first got the thing, I accidentally nuked the Flash BIOS, because I'm an idiot. They were very agreeable, and sent me a new motherboard. All I paid for was shipping! Try and get that out of some no-name Taiwanese fly-by-night PC outfit!

--Bob

You'll probably be able to find a EV56 machine for around $2000.

I recently purchased a DEC Alpha DPW 433au (EV56 21164a/Miata mobo) from egghead.com for US$1,199. &nbsp They recently had them avail. for US$1,049 (I just checked and I don't see it anymore... they only had 4 left and they may have been snapped up).

What is impossible to find is a place that will sell you just a motherboard or just an Alpha.

Amen! &nbsp Although I've seen more places that will sell the mobo and parts like E.L.I or other places that will sell you "inexpensive" (in quotes - although considering, the prices aren't too bad) systems, like DCG, but other than those, it has been a pain trying to find an upgrade processor for less than I paid for the whole system!

I still like my little alpha though... &nbsp heh heh.

And Alpha's have been running Linux almost from
day one.

HP should spend some of that money on alpha instead.

just check out this site.

www.dcginc.com

They have a 700Mhz Alpha 21264 system using the
AMD Irongate chipset for just $5000.


700Mhz EV6 system

Or screaming Dual 750Mhz Alpha 21264 system with
all the frills for just $15000
mind you thats with 8MB of cache per processor.

DUAL 750 Mhz Alpha 21264 System with 16MBytes of cache

looking up the spec site we see that a 700Mhz EV6 gets 39.1 specINT and 68.1 specFP.

scaling that these 750Mhz 21264's should have
42 specINT and 72 specFP


On a side note does HP think IA64 will not
be as hot as once predicted.
why are they now pushing linux for PA Risk.
if they are going to abandon PA Risk in a year or two
why start now to port linux?

Or is HP going to pull an SGI :)

Oops. PA Risk=PA-RISC.

And Alpha's have been running Linux almost from
day one.

HP should spend some of that money on alpha instead.

just check out this site.

www.dcginc.com

They have a 700Mhz Alpha 21264 system using the
AMD Irongate chipset for just $5000.


700Mhz EV6 system

Or screaming Dual 750Mhz Alpha 21264 system with
all the frills for just $15000
mind you thats with 8MB of cache per processor.

DUAL 750 Mhz Alpha 21264 System with 16MBytes of cache

looking up the spec site we see that a 700Mhz EV6 gets 39.1 specINT and 68.1 specFP.

scaling that these 750Mhz 21264's should have
42 specINT and 72 specFP


On a side note does HP think IA64 will not
be as hot as once predicted.
why are they now pushing linux for PA Risk.
if they are going to abandon PA Risk in a year or two
why start now to port linux?

Or is HP going to pull an SGI :)

Oops. PA Risk=PA-RISC.

And Alpha's have been running Linux almost from
day one.

HP should spend some of that money on alpha instead.

just check out this site.

www.dcginc.com

They have a 700Mhz Alpha 21264 system using the
AMD Irongate chipset for just $5000.


700Mhz EV6 system

Or screaming Dual 750Mhz Alpha 21264 system with
all the frills for just $15000
mind you thats with 8MB of cache per processor.

DUAL 750 Mhz Alpha 21264 System with 16MBytes of cache

looking up the spec site we see that a 700Mhz EV6 gets 39.1 specINT and 68.1 specFP.

scaling that these 750Mhz 21264's should have
42 specINT and 72 specFP


On a side note does HP think IA64 will not
be as hot as once predicted.
why are they now pushing linux for PA Risk.
if they are going to abandon PA Risk in a year or two
why start now to port linux?

Or is HP going to pull an SGI :)

Oops. PA Risk=PA-RISC.

Unfortunately, Alphas have a reputation of being refridgerator-sized machines with

• AlphaLinux.Org
  A good starting place. They have tons of links to vendors, list-archives, news, FAQ's, etc.
• DCG Inc.
  I've had good luck/great service from these guys. Alpha pricing starts at $1295 for a 533-mhz bare-bones kit.
• Compaq's DS10 (21264-500mhz)
  The 466mhz model does over twice as well as a G4 in SPECfp. I seem to remember stumbling across a sale (from Compaq) for these little monsters for $2999, though I can't find the link now.
• Microway
  Never dealt with them personally, but they have fast machines and a all-around good reputation. They also sell quadputers and compilers
• eBay
  You can often find cheap Alpha hardware on eBay. Over 6 months ago, I put together a PC164-500/64mb system for about $600. Read the AlphaLinux.Org FAQ's, HOWTO's and HCL before you buy anything.

For reference, here are a few (single-cpu) spec*95 figures... (mostly from spec.org)
INT- FP-- processor
20.3 13.3 Mac G3/466mhz
22.3 15.1 Intel P-III/550mhz
21.4 20.4 G4-450 Mhz 7400
16.2 23.9 UltraSparc/450mhz
18.0 27.0 Alpha 21164/600mhz (very old now)
24.6 47.9 Alpha 21264/466mhz (new "low-end")
32.1 53.7 Alpha UP2000/667mhz

There are some sites that advertise resonable prices. Check out www.dcginc.com for some Alpha-based systems. Most are under the $3000 range and there is a decent one at the $2000 mark. I don't think that these prices are terribly unreasonable. -Rg

I looked at eight sites from your AlphaLinux link, and exactly 0 had price information on motherboards and CPUs.

Hmm, the very first one I clicked on had pricing. Visit dcginc.com and see for yourself. (I have no association with dcginc).

Then I looked at Ebay (which I despise, since it pits customer against customer rather than vendor against vendor) and I did find a used 500Mhz alpha mobo and CPU for $250.00 Note: from what I understand, these need special (expensive && proprietary) memory.

Your choice, I've gotten very, very good deals from ebay on a wide range of items. Including Alphas!

Hmm, I believe any of the motherboards that support a 500MHz processor use regular DIMMS... The only systems that used expensive (but not proprietary) memory modules, were ones based on the 21064 and 21064A generation processors. These systems used True Parity SIMMS, which are now rare and expensive, but not propreietary!

By the way, this whole article is a joke anyway -- Motorola has had a complete design for PPC motherboards availible on their tech site for years. Not one mobo vendor has produced them.

Okay?

LONG LIVE ALPHA!

SPECint95 SPECfp95
Celery 400 + 14.9 10.6
PII 400 + 16.9 12.8
PII 450 ! 17.2 12.9
PII 450 + 18.5 13.3
PIII 450 + 18.7 13.7
PIII 500 + 20.6 14.7
21164 500 ! 15.7 19.5
21164A 533 * 16.1 18.8
21164A 667 * 23.0 30.0
21264 500 * 26.0 49.0
21264 500 ! 27.7 58.7

Why does this bother you? They sell Intel stuff, and now Intel funds them. Logical.

If you want Alpha, you know where to find it. (to paraphrase Dennis Ritchie).

Seriously, if VA Research doesn't sell your preferred platform, simply take your business elsewhere. Aspen Systems, Apache Digital and DCG all sell Alpha (and Sparc)-based linux boxes. Where is it written that a good Linux vendor has to sell all flavors of processors?

-Erik

1. DCG Inc.
   Great service, good prices. (story follows)
   I ordered myself a UX-600mhz (intergrated scsi+ether) for x-mas (last minute). The day after confirmation, they called back with news that (due to the holiday) 2mb-UX boards would be out of stock for a time. Instead of saying "Thanks for the money, you can wait a few weeks", Steve (the owner) offered me an LX (more expensive) + SCSI controller and ate the cost difference.
   I can't make any promises that they'll do the same for you, but that experience alone impressed the hell out of me.
   Anyway, if I had $5,000 to spend on hardware now, I'd either:
   • Install PVM on 2 of their $2,200 boxes (533mhz, IDE) and spend the extra on ups+disk+ram
   • Get the $4,300 "cool box" (UX-667mhz, 4mb-cache, SCSI).
2. Microway
   No personal experience here, but they're always running specials... that and everyone's heard of them.
   If you really want to chomp on data, try one of their quadputer cards (I've always wanted to...)

Okay, first, you can get a nice 533 MHz 21164 LX workstation for about half this- best prices I've seen are from DCG. Add options as you would for an Intel(-compatible), but beware, a lot of hardware doesn't work for Alpha, esp. video cards.

However, does your friend really want an alpha? It is getting more mature constantly, but should really be considered a beta platform. The big problem is that there's an awful lot of code written assuming pointers and ints are the same size, but Alpha's 64-bit pointers of course are not. So there is no Netscape, no WordPerfect, a good Mozilla hasn't been built since last July, GNOME and KDE have both had lots of 64-bit problems which showed up in Alpha and (I think) Sparc64 and nowhere else. About one in three kernels builds out-of-box (~1/3 don't build, ~1/3 don't boot), and until very recently, XFree86 had numerous common behaviors which crashed it. (However, there is an Applix for Linux/Alpha which I've heard is great.)

I use Alpha because of the awesome floating performance for my particular apps. I've heard memory bandwidth (~50% above 450 Mhz PII) makes it a slightly better price/performance web server too- but don't quote me. For everything else, it's really not any faster than a same-priced PII, and because of 64-bit problems, count on even good open-source code to be buggy or even unusable, or you will be disappointed.

OTOH, if you're up for the adventure or want the floating-point power and want to help make Linux work on the next generation of hardware, by all means go for it!

Thanks for the info.

1. www.cpumicromart.com
   You can pick up a udb+ram for ~$180. Any old 3.5" IDE drive will do.
   Pitfalls
   1. Finding (or making) a 2.5"(notebook)ide -> 3.5"ide cable.
   2. Older UDB firmware doesn't understand IDE properly. You may need to flash an upgrade (from gatekeeper.dec.com), if so, you will need a floppy.
   These come in two models, one w/ a 3.5" hdd mounting bracket and one w/ a pci-riser. You can still cram a 3.5" hdd into the pci-slot model, but...
   1. won't be able to use a floppy. :(
   2. the hdd will stick ~2" out the front. :(
   You can install redhat (or whatever) w/o a floppy or cdrom (not for the timid)
   1. Install the hdd in a working machine.
   2. Partition it like you would any other UDB (small (8mb or so) msdos-fs hd?1 etc).
   3. Install linload.exe, milo, kernel, rootdisk, etc. in said partition.
   4. Put the drive in your Multia.
   5. Fix your boot-settings to point at the stuff you installed.
   6. Cross your fingers and boot.
   7. Make sure the RedHat-CD is NFS-exported somewhere.
   8. When (if) the RedHat installer comes up, specify NFS for the install source.
2. www.eli.com
   ELI has a few "new in box" systems left for ~$350. All original stuff, factory 540mg scsi hdd, etc. They even test their systems, offer warranty, fast delivery...

1. www.dcginc.com
   For ~$2200 you can pick up an 533mhz-LX164a with an ide-hdd and 2mb L3 cache.
2. www.microway.com
   (fyi: I have no experience dealing with microway)
   Microway has a "special" going on 533mhz-SX164pc's for $1395. These boxes only have 1mb L2 cache, but they still spec_fp better than a PII-450.