nick thompson <nicholas.thompson1@...> wrote on 04/01/2007 05:03:40
PM:
> 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
> --
> gentoo-alpha@g.o mailing list
>
I have an AS1000 4/233 that I subsequently upgraded to a 5/333. Getting
Gentoo (and Windows NT) up and running was fairly painless. I too had a
problem with the CD-ROM drive. Finding a newer SCSI drive solved that
problem. The handbook was spot on about the disk partitioning and was
overall a big help. I stuck in a PCI Matrox card for video support and
even found enough parity RAM to have 512 MB. After some fiddling I had
Gnome running and was browsing with Firefox. With the 6 SCSI disks my
machine came with, it truly was a noisy beast of a system (and heavy!).
Unfortunately, the 5/333 CPU card died over a year ago; without another
ev5 card, I can't 'downgrade' the firmware back to support the 4/233 card
and reclaim my system :(
-Jeremy
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