Recycling Vintage Alphas with Debian

robstah writes: "Vintage Alpha based systems, such as the DECstation are often available going cheap at auctions or free from a skip as companies 'upgrade' to PCs. As many goverments now want to prevent computers from ending up in landfill one solution is for us geeks to recycle. How? Installing Debian of course. Debian Planet has a great article on installing Debian on vintage Alphas."

Comments

DECstation != Alpha

[xmedh02]

The DECstation is not based on the Alpha processor,
but rather on MIPS R2000-R4000. They were not very powerful, say, 386 or 486 level. Alpha was the
next generation after MIPS based DECs.

Re:DECstation != Alpha

[dannannan]

This is untrue. I have a DECstation 3000 Model 300LX here under my desk that's based on the AXP architecture and has an Alpha 21064-AA.

I've attempted to install Linux on my DECstation before, but so far I've been blocked by two things:

• I have no floppy drive. The firmware supports an ethernet boot, but it only supports MOPD, not BOOTP.
• I can't find any drivers written to support the machine's TurboChannel bus.

If anyone else has gotten Linux working under similar circumstances and can offer any help, I'd be happy to hear it.

D

Re:DECstation != Alpha

[Anonymous Coward]

Type 'DEC 3000' into google to find the linux port. It doesn't seem to have been maintained for a while.

You could try netbsd/alpha which apparently has full support.

Re:DECstation != Alpha

[PapaZit]

NetBSD supports MOP and can be used to boot a DECstation (both the older MIPS based ones and the handful of Alpha based ones that use MOP).

DEC Station != MIPS ?

[red_crayon]

Someone on here will know this.

I thought the "DEC Station" was a MIPS beast and the Alphas went by another name?

Anyone know? Were there both MIPS- and Alpha-based DEC Stations?

Re:DEC Station != MIPS ?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

DECstations were mips based. Alphas started up in the Alphaserver and Alphastation lines. DEC didn't want to wait til their chip was ready, to sell a new risc workstation, and for once in their history they were willing to buy externally. Wish someone would give me a free alpha, its the last DEC box I need to have one of everything (pdp, check, vax, check, decstation, check, alpha... *boohoo*).

Re:DEC Station != MIPS ?

[JeffL]

Some of the early turbochannel alphas, had badges saying DECstation on the front. The Personel DECStation 25 (a 25mhz mips R3000) and the Alpha 300 series even shared the same box. I think it is an Alpha 400 series maybe, that I am recalling with that label. I don't think the Alphastation and Alphaserver names were used until the PCI based systems.

All of my old DECstations (mips and alpha) are sitting in a storage room because it is too much bureaucracy to throw them away, but they just aren't worth pulling out and playing with.

I am probably getting some of the names confused, but this is definately a problem that Digital (aka DEC) perpetuated with their constant renaming of stuff. Talk about a company being run into the ground by poor marketing. Since I have been using it, their Unix OS has been called OSF/1, Digital Unix, and Tru64. At some point in the mid-90s, DEC decided that years of name recognition and reputation under the name DEC was too much, so they wanted everybody to call them Digital.

Another good source of old boxes

[don.g]

is a nearby CS department.

The one at my local university recently got rid of around ten SPARCstation 5s. One is sitting on my desk. (running Solaris, though, as I want to use the SunPC accelerator it has).

You have to be careful, though - the 170Mhz turbosparc in this isn't supported very well under linux - it froze in the middle of X - although OpenBSD worked quite nicely.

Great stuff

[dciman]

I have two old DEC Multia's powered by 166 mhz Alphas. I think it is wonderful to see some attention being given to these fun older platforms. For the longest time I was just messing with old builds of RH on them.... but Debian is the way to go for sure. I've played around with some of the BSD's (I run FreeBSD on my desktop), but didn't ahve much luck. Debain is the next best pick for me.

I highly recommend picking up one of these machines if you want somethign fun to play around with. They can be had for next to nothing on Ebay or Yahoo Auctions. Mine cost me 35 bucks a piece I believe...and they had never been opened form the packing! Integrated sound.....ethernet, PC Card slot.... and the slide out mothboard tray just looks sweet:)

Re:Great stuff

[Jeffrey Baker]

The Multia makes a terrific network appliance. With its 2 PCMCIA slots, PCI slot, network port, and SCSI port, it's absolutely packed with ability. It can be an 802.11b access point, 802.11b bridge, file+print server, NAT router and firewall, DNS cache, HTTP cache, and ssh gateway all at the same time. It's an insane little machine.

Multia buyer's note: don't buy one that isn't working. Finding parity SIMMs is a pain and many samples suffer from thermal problems. Don't buy one unless you've seen it boot.

not all alphas are created equal

[NightHwk1]

I have a 500mhz Alpha at home that used to be a system for running Lightwave at work.

Since both Microsoft and NewTek decided to stop supporting the Alpha architecture, its been sitting in a corner collecting dust.

I attempted to install Linux on this beast about 3 months ago, and realized that it had a BIOS specifically made for WinNT.. a blue menu with no such option as "switch to digital unix" as the article mentions. No way to boot from a floppy or CD either. (though i think it has an option to reinstall NT...)

After spending long hours reading HowTos and articles I finally just gave up.

If you plan on buying a cheap Alpha system for these purposes, do some research first on the model and BIOS type.

Re:not all alphas are created equal

[arri]

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.

But most *can* run Linux

[Styx]

No, but most Alphas can be flashed with new firmware, and enable you to use SRM (the Unix console) that way.

It's hard to say, without knowing exactly what Alpha you have (real DEC or or a whitebox, PC164LX/SX), how you could install Linux on it, but either an SRM firmware upgrade or install using MILO.

Best of luck with it, it can be quite fun.

Latency for firewalls on games

[BrookHarty]

Year Machine CPU CLOCK RAM UNIXBench Score
1992? PC 80486 66MHz 32MB 11.1
1995 Multia Alpha 21066A 166MHz 64MB 12.8

I upgrade my p75 to a netgear router, and my Ping went from 30ms to 10ms. I even tried that freesco floppy router, same thing.
People say that they make good routers, but I want the lowest ping for games. So maybe older machines might good firewalls, if you dont care about ping. Some good benchmarks on firewall/nat latency would be nice. Hell, I still got a sparc 20 that makes a good X terminal, but ill use machines built for low latency firewalls.
-
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. - Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809)

Similar article on NewsForge

[doorbot.com]

Although this one throws in a few SPARC and VAX machines...

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/02/19/0 49208

And it seems the MIPS-based versions of the respective OSes are coming along; NetBSD will run on your O2. SGI's work on Linux for MIPS is as far as "only Indys have a working XFree86" although a few other machines will boot Linux.

An interesting question is what about the Cobalt MIPS-based appliances? Don't they run Linux as the x86 ones do? So where's the source code for those?

Re:Death of the alpha

[don.g]

Use debian. They have an up-to-date alpha port. Not being driven by commercial considerations, they have ports for many other architectures you can't get redhat for, too (eg m68k). Upgrading from redhat may be a pain, but once you've got it running, debian upgrades are very easy (particularly if you have a fast connection) and there are *lots* of binary packages available.

FreeBSD Alpha Works Great

[Motheius]

I suppose most people don't know but FreeBSD on the Alpha works just fine. Have you tried looking into this?

Re:AlphaPC 164's are good

[JeffL]

I am still running two of these (533mhz 164SX) machines as general login and computing servers. For some reason people really like to use xdm on these old alphas from their Windows boxes. I even setup a nice dual processor Intel machine with loads of memory running Debian and the latest gnome and kde, but nobody seems interested in using that.

The old turbochannel alphas had some pretty serious reliability problems (a 90 day warranty on a $7000 computer!?) I had most of the DEC components (i.e., not 3rd party stuff, like disks) on my two turbochannel alphas replaced several times under maintenaince before getting to board revisions that could last more than 6 months.

However, the PCI based alphas I have seem to be totally bullet proof. I think in the whole time I have been running them, once lost a disk, which one can hardly blame DEC/Compaq for.

For integer stuff the 164SX machines are bit slow, probably comparable to a 350mhz PII, but for floating point, they are probably better than a 700mhz PIII (though I haven't benchmarked these thngs in years, so I may be remembering wrong). Of course they don't compare in any way to a $50 1Ghz Duron.

alphalinux.org dead? try linuxalpha.org

[Styx]

The mirror at http://www.linuxalpha.org seems to be online.

And, RedHat, hasn't given on the Alpha yet, RedHat 7.2 *will* be comming out. They've done a deal with Compaq: see Phillip Copeland (Bryce)'s diary

But, you're right, more Alpha hackers are always welcome.

Re:What about the BSDs?

[Daniel Stone]

As for the accusations of being i386-only, that's completely false.

That's one of the main reason to choose Debian. If something doesn't build correctly on all arches (autobuilders), then it'll get a serious-severity bug against it, and that version won't make it to testing.

Our current Debian Project Leader (Ben Collins) is the lead SPARC porter, while Bdale Garbee, who came 4th IIRC is the main IA64 porter, and Branden Robinson is active in PowerPC stuff. Porters are given a high status in Debian as it's absolutely essential.

Do your homework sometime. One of the main reasons to choose Debian is the diversity of architecture support.

Trying out Alphas

[Compaq Test Drive]

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.

Re:Death of the alpha

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone else noticed that the Alpha version of Redhat 7.2 was bought by Compaq. It no longer exists on the Redhat site. The source code is gone too.