Re: DEC Multia

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

KoReE said:
> Also, on the Multia's with internal SCSI, is there room for an internal
> SCSI CDROM?

They all have internal (and external) SCSI.  And no, there's no place
in the case for a CD-ROM drive.  There is barely enough room for a
regular-sized internal hard drive.  (The thing was really designed to
use laptop-sized components apparently.)

> Steve, don't you have one of these?

Yes, I do.

Here's a mail I just sent to another list...  Hopefully it will answer
any questions.

---- Begin forwarded message ----

Robert  Threet said:
> Is this the DEC Alpha you have?  

Yes, although I paid a lot more for mine.  :-)

> Do you know if you can have both an internal SCSI hard drive and an 
> external SCSI CD ROM on the first unit??

What do you mean by "on the first unit"?  It's SCSI, so you can do    
anything with it that you would normally do with SCSI.  The only thing
you have to be careful with is internal hard drives...  If they run   
too hot, they'll fry the machine.  Also, the power supply isn't 
terribly powerful.  If you can get a cool, low power drive, then by   
all means install it internally, but otherwise you'll need to invest  
in an external SCSI enclosure, which are ridiculously expensive.      
(BTW, if anybody knows where to get cheap SCSI enclosures, say less   
than $100, let me know PLEASE. :)

Oh, the only other thing you need to worry about with those systems is
that they take true parity 72-pin SIMMs.  For some reason, the price  
of that stuff doubled recently...  64 meg (the least you'd want to    
make the machine really usable, 32 is fine if it is just a toy) is    
going to cost $132 (plus shipping), going by the cheapest price listed
on PriceWatch this morning (http://www.pricewatch.com/).

Honestly, I can't recommend that everybody just run out and get one of
these...  They aren't bad machines, but the performance sucks for an  
Alpha.  (They are comparable in speed to a 60 MHz Pentium or so.)     
They've only got a 64-bit memory bus, unlike all the other Alphas     
which have a 128- or 256-bit memory bus.  They've only got 128k of L2 
cache, which would be pitiful for an x86 machine, but is *really* bad 
for a RISC machine.  Of course, there's also the fact that you'll 
likely have to invest a few hundred bucks (for a hard drive, maybe an 
external SCSI enclosure, and RAM) just to make the thing usable.

All that said, I like mine, and I don't feel like I got a bad deal    
paying something close to 10 times as much (with RAM, disk, mouse, and
keyboard mind you).  The thing is pretty small, so it is easy to lug  
around to do demos & stuff.  (Now that we have a NetWinder, I'm not   
sure how much I'll be using it for that though...)  It runs Linux     
well, and now there are actually applications available for Linux on  
the Alpha (free stuff like KDE & GIMP, plus Applix, maybe others) it  
is actually usable.  Plus, I don't know about the rest of you, but I  
like knowing more about non-x86 platforms...

Anyway, if anybody has questions about the things, feel free to ask   
me.

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Linux Users of Central Illinois
(217)698-1694             | Meetings the 4th Tuesday of every month
Steven Pritchard          | http://www.luci.org/ for more info

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