[gentoo-alpha] alphaserver 1000 4/266M

[gentoo-alpha] alphaserver 1000 4/266M

[nick thompson]

hi. I was lucky enough to receive an alphaserver 1000 4/266RM (what it 
says on the front) and I was wondering if anyone on the list has 
installed on one or currently has one they are using. any experiences or 
gotchas you'd like to share would be wonderful, or even just real life 
examples of what people are doing with gentoo on one of these machines.

This is my first Alpha machine. I have gentoo on i386, ppc, amd64, my 
nslu2 (well, before the 2x speed mod) , soon my ultrasparc machine when 
I figure out just what it is exactly, and soon on my SGI O2 when I get 
my tftp server working because the cdrom drive is broken. Anyway, point 
is, I like my little farm here and I like getting experience on a lot of 
different architectures. I am prepared for odd weird things that aren't 
i386, though I mostly use amd64 for my desktop and i386 for my laptop.

Anyone who has one of these machines, or knows anything about them, 
please let me know the goings on.

Anyone who wants to tell a first time Alpha user some advice, I'm 
listening. :)

Thanks,

Nick

"All unix, all the time."

http://npt.ath.cx


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Re: [gentoo-alpha] alphaserver 1000 4/266M

[nick thompson]

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
Thomas,
  Thanks a lot. Really. That was a very, very informative reply.
Once I get into the install and have more questions, I'll certainly ask. 
Thanks!

Nick

"All unix, all the time."

http://npt.ath.cx
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Re: [gentoo-alpha] alphaserver 1000 4/266M

[Thomas Cort]

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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

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Re: [gentoo-alpha] alphaserver 1000 4/266M

[nick thompson]

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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Re: [gentoo-alpha] alphaserver 1000 4/266M

[jksands]

nick thompson <nicholas.thompson1@mchsi.com> 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@gentoo.org 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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