Re: FREE Alphas!!

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

I have one of these boxes.  (I've had one since '96.)  They're nice,
but...

Matthew MacCrimmon said:
> what additional hardware will it take to get one of these up and running?

Not much, but it is all expensive.

> i assume a hard drive and ram -- anything else?  will it take a scsi hd?
> what kind of ram?

They'll only take SCSI disks, and even then you have to be careful to
get ones that are relatively low-power (and low-heat), or else you run
the risk of overloading the power supply.

The RAM is 72-pin true-parity SIMMs.  Last I checked, they cost about
4 times as much as PC100 DIMMs for the same capacity.  Plus, it takes
twice as much RAM on Alpha to do the same thing on x86 (roughly).  (In
other words, the machine is not very useful with <32MB.)

That said, I still like mine.  When I got it, it was faster than my
fastest PC (a 486DX2/66).  (Not by much, but it was faster.)  Now I
wouldn't recommend buying one unless you just *really* want an Alpha
(and even then you might be better off trying to find a cheap 21164
motherboard), or if you already have one and want some spare parts.
(I suppose if you had lots of parity SIMMs and SCSI disks lying around
they'd be a good deal too.)

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

--
To unsubscribe, send email to majordomo@silug.org with
"unsubscribe silug-discuss" in the body.