[H-GEN] Alfa motherboards

[Craig Eldershaw]

Hi all,

>Saw your mail below. and just wondering if you can tell me where to get
>thoxe components for the proce.... ie HDD and CDRom?

Well they're US prices.  So US$, and cheaper anyway.  You probably *won't*
get those prices anywhere in Australia.  Probably double the prices would be
easy to find.  Less for some if you scrounged or went 2nd hand.

>> DEC Alpha AXP Pci33 motherboard with CPU.
>> 
>> Includes 166 MHz 21066 CPU.
>> 
>> 0K cache - uses regular DIP 32x8 or 128x8 SRAM for max of 1 MB.

I'd thoroughly recomend lots of cache. Being a RISC architecture, 
it burns it up fast, and with small cache your processor is sitting
idle a lot as stuff comes through.

>> Includes on board: SCSI-2, IDE, floppy, 2 serial/1 par ports.
                              ^^^
Check the specs of this mb.  The DEC UDB mb supports IDE, not EIDE.

>;We just got more in stock, so all of you who missed out on the
>;deal the first time- here's a chance to get $1170 board (DEC list
>;price) for $129 in single q-ty or $99/ea in q-ties 10 or more:
>
>	This sounds like it could be an excellent deal, especailly if a
>few humbuggers got together and made a bulk purchase (a couple would prob
>still have to be resold to third parties).  I wouldn't mind getting my

Note again, US prices.  Also no mention of the cost of shipping relatively
fragile/buly mbs OS....(if indeed they are prepared to)

>hands on such a machine.  Remind me tho, the 166Mhz cpu would give what
>sort of intel-like performance?  Something like a high-end 486?  Maybe

FP performance is a lot better than Integer (only fp is pipelined).  Arguments
rage, but I've heard P90 as a common comparison.  Depends a lot upon
cache too.  Also to a certian extent upon the particular mb.  On the other hand, 
for a server, with SCSI2 support etc, it's nice.

>	Can someone tell me what sort of components won't be comapatable
>with my current setup?  I guess I'd have to reformat my hard-drive etc,
>but I'd be expecting my current keyboard, floppy, ide hd (with
>controller), video, internal modem etc to work.  Would I be correct in
>these assumptions?  

Note previous comment about *E*IDE drives.  Also, since I hope no one
on this list will be running NT (nor can afford OSF), then Linux/FreeBSD/
NetBSD is the OS.  None of these fully support all pieces of HW yet.  Eg,
*BSD does not support floppy contollers on at least some DEC Alpha mbs.
I believe some video cards (esp the nice super-duper ones) still give
problems in Linux.  w.r.t CDs, I don't know how many IDE devices it 
supports (also relevant if you have multiple HDs).

I don't know, but would be suspicious of sound cards working correctly.

Just my 2p worth.

Cheerd,
	Craig.
----------------------- HUMBUG General List --------------------------------
echo "unsubscribe general" | mail majordomo at humbug.org.au # To Unsubscribe