Re: Another Alpha turned off...

Michael Austin wrote:
It was a sad day for me today as I completed the final backup and making sure everything I needed was removed from my trusty Alpha 2100 that has been running firstdbasource.com and spacelots.com for the past 8-9 years. I purchased (or traded services for systems) 2 Alpha 2100's during 1999. Both had just been retired at 2 separate Charlotte-based companies and had been running at those sites for 4-5 years at that time. I lost one of them about 3 years ago - bad I/O board and it has been sitting silent acting as storage unit for a monitor/keyboard of the other server. During Christmas week, I found 2 inexpensive DS10L's that have taken the place of the 2100's. The "good" 2100/275 may live yet again as a small Samba file server for a local law firm, but that is still being negotiated. (hey, I may even make back the $1K I paid for it :) ). The other will be taken to a local computer recycling center for disposal after cannibalizing any remaining boards. (The SCSI card is now in my DS10L :))

DEC made the very best hardware in the business. I do not see ANY vendor that even comes close to competing. Along with the 2 2100's, I also have been running a |d|i|g|i|t|a|l| Starion 266MhzPentI+32Mb mem. I purchased it in '97 from a Frye's Electronics in Phoenix and it had been a floor demo that ran from the time they received it in 1995 until I bought it. In 1999, I wiped Windows95 off of it and installed Caldera Linux. It's sole purpose in life since 1999 is to keep my DSL IP address in sync with my Dynamic DNS provider ZONEEDIT.COM In 2000 the primary port on the IDE controller died in such a way that there was no more "C:" drive. I created a boot-floppy that stays in the floppy drive and boots, then turns control over to the D: drive... It has been doing this now for 8+ years - headless. I have a feeling the Starion is dying as the fan gets loud at times and the box reboots itself every couple months. I have a feeling my 6 year old Dell box will replace its functionality - but do not think it will last as long as the Starion has... almost 13 years - almost as long as the 2100's.

They have served me well -please pause for a moment of silence...

Long Live Alpha.

Agreed - Have run several Alpha machines here, the most long lived being the 500/400 workstation bought from a fire sale in 1998. Less than a year old when bought and except for yearly clean and de-dust, hardly switched off in nearly 10 years of continuous use.

I couldn't believe how fast it was initially and would still be competitive now, were it not for the fact that there's little support in open source for Tru64 and Alpha. Even Linux Alpha support is dying. It was switched off in January in favour of Sun Sparc / Solaris 10 (free), once all the tools had been ported. Something more mainstream, one of the last independant processors, not intel and loads of cheap s/hand hardware. Just can't ignore the logic.

One thing I don't fully agree with is the bit about the "best hardware in the business". This may have been true in the days of the old big iron stuff like 6000 series vax etc, but some of the later w/s boxes were very plasticky - the 500/400 case has insubstantial plastic sides with retaining tabs that fall off etc. As for their pc's, lets not even discuss that :-). If you want to see engineering integrity, take the lid off a Sun Ultra II, for example or nearly any of the Sun or Compaq servers of that period. Presswork and mech design equal to anything dec ever made. Dec were first and foremost engineers, but the rot set in once the bean counters started running the business and they started to get too greedy. But, some of the best minds and creative engineering culture in the business, definately.

Long live Alpha - indeed. The 500/400 may find something else to do, or the torch will be passed on...

Chris





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