What to do?

[Opossum]

I have recieved 2 alpha workstations from my wifes work and have no idea what to do with them. I am up for ideas and or what they may be worth.

System 1: Case is labelled NTSI Formula 600
CPU- 600mhz Alpha 21164 with 2MB Cach
Memory- 512MB (2x256MB DIMM)
Hard Drive- Seagate Barracuda ST39173W UltraWide SCSI 9.1GB
SCSI- SymBios Logic SCSI card
Video- AccelGraphics Eclips II PCI-32
CD-Rom- Toshiba SCSI
Case and Power- Mid Tower 400W Quantum Power Lab

System 2: Case is labelled NTSI Formula 533
CPU- 533mhz Alpha 21164 with 2mb
Memory- 512MB (2x256MB DIMM)
Hard Drive- Seagate Barracuda ST34572W UltraWide SCSI 4.55GB
SCSI- SymBios Logic SCSI card
Video- AccelGraphics Eclips II PCI-32
CD-Rom- Toshiba SCSI
Case and Power- Mid Tower 400W Quantum Power Lab

They are both is great shape. System 2 makes a high pitched wine from the hard drive.
What can I do with them? Are they still worth anything?

Thanks
Charles

 

[Opossum]

BUMP

 

[n0cmonkey]

Donate them to OpenBSD.

 

[MichaelD]

Well, I've never heard of Alpha-brand CPUs before...what OS runs on them? Some flavor of Unix, I'd imagine.

I'm sure you could turn them into a router/firewall or just use them to crunch numbers for some Distributed Computing Program.

Cool gift, though.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Well, I've never heard of Alpha-brand CPUs before...what OS runs on them? Some flavor of Unix, I'd imagine.

:Q

DEC was the company that originally made them. AMD licensed the EV6 bus for the Athlons. The DEC Alpha was only one of the most powerful chip until HP killed it in favor of the Itanic.

What runs on them:
Windows NT -although support is crap
FreeBSD -Tier 2 these days though, forget it
NetBSD -Of course
OpenBSD -duh
Linux -anyone surprised?
VMS -eh?
OpenVMS -w00t

I'm sure you could turn them into a router/firewall or just use them to crunch numbers for some Distributed Computing Program.

Cool gift, though.

Definitely. I occassionally look for them on ebay. Never found one when I had money though.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Well, I've never heard of Alpha-brand CPUs before...what OS runs on them? Some flavor of Unix, I'd imagine.

:Q

DEC was the company that originally made them. AMD licensed the EV6 bus for the Athlons. The DEC Alpha was only one of the most powerful chip until HP killed it in favor of the Itanic.

What runs on them:
Windows NT -although support is crap
FreeBSD -Tier 2 these days though, forget it
NetBSD -Of course
OpenBSD -duh
Linux -anyone surprised?
VMS -eh?
OpenVMS -w00t

I'm sure you could turn them into a router/firewall or just use them to crunch numbers for some Distributed Computing Program.

Cool gift, though.

Definitely. I occassionally look for them on ebay. Never found one when I had money though.

Thanks, n0cmonkey!!! I HAVE HEARD of DEC...I just didn't know they made the Alpha. Me<--ignorant

I am beginning to learn how to use Linux...I know there's a whole other world of OSes out there...baby steps...you know?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: MichaelD

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Well, I've never heard of Alpha-brand CPUs before...what OS runs on them? Some flavor of Unix, I'd imagine.

:Q

DEC was the company that originally made them. AMD licensed the EV6 bus for the Athlons. The DEC Alpha was only one of the most powerful chip until HP killed it in favor of the Itanic.

What runs on them:
Windows NT -although support is crap
FreeBSD -Tier 2 these days though, forget it
NetBSD -Of course
OpenBSD -duh
Linux -anyone surprised?
VMS -eh?
OpenVMS -w00t

I'm sure you could turn them into a router/firewall or just use them to crunch numbers for some Distributed Computing Program.

Cool gift, though.

Definitely. I occassionally look for them on ebay. Never found one when I had money though.

Thanks, n0cmonkey!!! I HAVE HEARD of DEC...I just didn't know they made the Alpha. Me<--ignorant

I am beginning to learn how to use Linux...I know there's a whole other world of OSes out there...baby steps...you know?

Word. The Alpha is one of my favorite CPUs of all time. Yeah, I'm a geek. One of these days I'll have one better than 166mhz. Which I never bothered to setup...

 

[addragyn]

MichaelD you need to turn in your gek card for a sub. to PC Mag.




You could say Alpha was ahead of it's time. The concepts, and engineers, would go on to help birth the top processors of today. This chip has a very impressive legacy for something that was dropped in '92. Almost broke my heart to see how cheaply these things went fo rat some dot bomb auctions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Alpha

 

[n0cmonkey]

There was a great interview on the designing of the Alpha processor, but I can't find it ATM.

 

[M16Grenadier]

Give them to me.

 

[Illissius]

Put Linux on 'em (Gentoo if possible, dunno whether they have it for Alphas) and use it as your desktop rig, and then brag about it.

 

[Sunner]

The 21264 pretty much owned everything for a long long time after it's introduction, even though DEC was sold to Compaq and all.
Very impressive systems overall.

My first experience with a "real" UNIX was an Alpha, a quad 166 MHz(I think) box of some sort, this was at the time when the PPro 200 was the hottest stuff you could get in the x86 world.
Damn that thing screamed

Oh and on a sidenote, I think you should give them to me, I could setup Tru64 on one and OpenVMS on the other

 

[Opossum]

Thanks for the replys. A side from giving them away do you think they have any resale or trade value.

I'd like to upgrade my main computer rather than adding a few more old computers to a room full of aging computers already.

I have a baby on the way and need to get any upgrading out of the way before he arrives or I fear the wife wont let me.

Thanks
Charles

 

[Opossum]

Bump!

An Ideas on values for $$ or trade?

Thanks

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Opossum
Bump!

An Ideas on values for $$ or trade?

Thanks

If I didn't just buy a car, I'd buy one from you. Damn you Mazda!

 

[silverpig]

Give it to me?

I'll put them to work for team AT seti

 

[Opossum]

If I didnt need to upgrade my main rig I would give them away. I realy have no use for them.

I'm hoping to get an Idea of what they may be worth.

Other than the true geeks do they have any value?

Baby is on the way and this could be my last chance for computer upgrade for awhile.


Thanks
Charles

 

[silverpig]

Similar cpu (533) and mobo are going for $40 on ebay I think. Dunno about the drives and what not though.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Opossum
If I didnt need to upgrade my main rig I would give them away. I realy have no use for them.

I'm hoping to get an Idea of what they may be worth.

Other than the true geeks do they have any value?

Baby is on the way and this could be my last chance for computer upgrade for awhile.


Thanks
Charles

They have very little value to the unwashed masses. To someone like me though...

Search through ebay. You could probably make a few hundred off them. I'd PM you an offer, but it might be a bit insulting.

If you are interested in selling them through here, let me know. If you've got some heatware we can probably work something out.

 

[n0cmonkey]

slightly bigger alpha (ram/hdd)

Definitely can't afford that right now.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Desktop Alpha (21164) chips, really aren't worth all that much, other than maybe as some sort of geek collector's item. They're really not all that much more powerful than much cheaper x86-compatible chips available these days. I'm honestly surprised that those boards take DIMMs, most of the cheaper non-server Alpha boards that I've seen take (parity) SIMMs. Granted, you *could* run a 64-bit version of Windows NT 3.x (and 4.0 ?), or OpenVMS on them. That might actually be fun, I used to actually really like VMS back in the day. It was an *extremely* stable OS, moreso than even Linux, and you can see the roots of Windows NT, and how the design is similar in many ways to NT. (Dave Cutler worked on both.) Unfortunately, MS hobbled succeeding versions of NT, making them more and more Win32 API-centric, and basically neglecting the "true" power of NT that was under the hood. (Things like the Object Namespace Mananger - VMS had these things called System Lexical Tables, somewhat similar, and very useful and powerful.) VMS Mailboxes became NT I/O Completion Ports, a whole load of things were in fact very similar between VMS and WNT. (Notice, VMS + 1 = WNT.)