Re: alphaserver 1000 4/266M

Thomas Cort wrote:
> Welcome Nick,
>
>   
>> Anyone who has one of these machines, or knows anything about them, 
>> please let me know the goings on.
>>     
>
> I have an AlphaServer 1000 4/233. I think it is pretty similar to what
> you've got. A few things I ran into during the install....
>
> The CD-ROM drive wouldn't boot the live CD. I'm not sure if you'll run
> into the same problem since the drive was really old and could have
> just been broken. I replaced it with a used SCSI CD-ROM for $10 from
> the local computer store and it booted just fine.
>
> If it doesn't power on at all, make sure the top panel of the case is
> on and properly in place. The middle of the top panel of the case has a
> small piece of metal oriented downwards. When the top panel is put back
> in place properly, the small piece of metal will press down on a
> switch. When the switch isn't pressed down, the system will refuse to
> power on.
>
>   
>> Anyone who wants to tell a first time Alpha user some advice, I'm 
>> listening. :)
>>     
>
> A few things to remember when partitioning.... "the first cylinder
> cannot be used as the [bootloader] image will be placed there," so you
> should start your partitions after the first cylinder. This is in the
> documentation, but is easy to miss. Also, the bootloader (aboot) can
> only boot kernels from ext2 and ext3 partitions. If you want to use
> another filesystem for the root filesystem, you'll need to create a
> separate /boot partition.
>
> You CFLAGS should look like this "-mcpu=ev4 -pipe -O2 -mieee"
> I might be wrong about the mcpu value (it could be ev45), check the
> "cpu model" line in /proc/cpuinfo to see which is correct. The -mieee
> enables full IEEE floating point support.
>
> Documentation is available here:
> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/alpha/doc/index.xml
>
> You can ask for help on this mailing list, in #gentoo-alpha on
> irc.freenode.net, and on the forums in the "Alternative Architecture"
> forum. Bugs can be reported on http://bugs.gentoo.org
>
> I hope that helped. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
>
> -Thomas
>
> PS: if you want to impress your friends, you can change the text
> displayed on the LCD by typing "SET OCP_TEXT MyText" (without quotes)
> into the SRM console and rebooting. A picture of this is on my blog
> http://mediumbagel.org/nucleus/index.php?itemid=9&catid=4
>   
Anyone else have experience with a machine of this type? I am finally 
able to work on it now that I have reclaimed some room in my unix 
dungeon. :) Any info at all appreciated.

Nick

"All unix, all the time."

http://npt.ath.cx
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