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OpenBSD's Alpha Support In Trouble
Nimrangul writes "Hours ago Theo de Raadt put out a call for an Alpha CS20, because as of last night OpenBSD no longer has one. The CS20 that died was a build machine and without it further support for the Alpha platform would be nearly impossible. If you have a C320 or other 1U Alpha machine that you would be willing to donate to the project, please respond to the discussion on the misc mailing list."
Given the amount of equipment in Theo's server room and given the importance of this equipment to the project, why not construct a thermal shutdown device? How about a machine with a number of temperature probes around various points in the room, and when they all agree that the temperature is hot, they initiate shutdown+power-off procedures on the machines in the room? Now, I realize that some of the machines in the rack are older and may not have self-power-off abilities but it seems likely that enough of them could power down to make a difference.
The lack of actual compiling on your fringe hardware is why the support for it is so bad.
While it is true that it can be compiled faster on other hardware, that doesn't mean that the machine itself can compile it's own copy of the operating system.
If my machine cannot compile it's an operating system supposedly designed for it, there is a problem with the code and most likely how it works.
Cross compiling can be handy for speedy development, but not quality development. That's where the actual hardware comes in.
OpenBSD would be another matter entirely. It actually sees some signifignat use ...
I find it amusing that you'd suggest nobody uses NetBSD at a time when the front page of slashdot carries a link to a quaterly NetBSD report mentioning seven new developers, seven google "Summer of Code" projects and a number of donations from both individuals and corporations.
Just because we don't make such a song and dance over it doesn't mean we don't exist.
Honestly, I think it better to try to keep a few operating systems running on the older architectures as something of a public service to people that are still made to use them.
Eventually the platforms may actually die out, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be something to run on the ones still available. I'd go nuts if my dozen or so 586s didn't have something I could run on them, I mean, it's just be a waste to throw away working hardware like that.
Or is it a computer to you?
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Well Yes and No.
:P ) And Your Alpha will happily run forever. The uptime records out there are held by a heritiage of machines that passes down through the alpha and sadly.. ends there. thers no next gen... hell they didnt need one... The alpha CPUs hp ships now were designed back round 2000 and have been sitting waiting for the manufacturing to catch up. ANd they beat the Iatanium even though theyve been on the shelf that long.
For a start Check ebay. Alpha is KING. You dont see 10 year old x86 machines selling for hundreds of dollars do you. Want to know why. Cause 10 year old X86 machines suck. For the price of 4 (absolutely striped to the core components) x86s you can get 1 alpha. That can take More CPUs, More Ram, More reliable hot swap frigging everything, Built with the kind of quality you see in an IBM model M keyboard (not a lexmark one
Its to much to just explain in a slashdot post.
The alpha is one of THE fundamental architectures that holds up the under time.
I morn its loss as do many others. Its important that this be kept alive even if just to stab at intel for shipping an inferior over priced POS to replace it purely because of 10 years of corporate wheeling and dealing utterly blind to the actualy day to day operation of 4 of the IT industries biggest companies.
XML - A clever joke would be here if