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I acquired this desk-side beast in the early 2000s as I was leaving a job where they had one but no longer used it. She's an odd cookie built near the demise of Digital Equipment Corporation, and she was loaded with SCSI controllers to access a multitude of DEC StorageWorks external arrays. Let's talk a bit about it...
As I've mentioned, I also own a VAX 4000, which is generally desk-side-ish. From a pure build quality standpoint, the VAX feels so much more solid. I'd say the giant front door on the Alphaserver feels like it was made out of just enough poorly recycled plastic that it looks nice from a distance but breaks easily if you stare too long. DEC must have been under some serious cost pressure in the mid-to-late 1990s because the build quality just isn't there.
Ah, if only... The Alphaserver 2000 is, as I said, an odd cookie. If you open it up, you'll be appalled by the mix of PCI and EISA slots (I know I was). Yep, this machine shipped with EISA slots for who knows what reason. When you try to boot NetBSD, all hell breaks loose when trying to initialize PCI because that damn EISA bus is present. So this machine isn't supported by NetBSD.
Debian does actually install on this behemoth with one important caveat. Remember those EISA slots I mentioned? Well, the console's graphics card, a Compaq Qvision card that nobody has ever heard of except people who bought this machine, is in one EISA slot. The exciting news is that Xorg doesn't support this card. You can boot Linux, but there'll be no X server for you.
Have you ever tried to get a VMS license? Neither have I...
In theory, this machine should run Windows NT like a dream. I happen to have several Windows NT 4 installation CDs that claim to be for x86 and Alpha. To try booting Windows, though, you need to install an alternate firmware set for "reasons" to get Windows booting. After finishing that seemingly stupid task, I popped in a Windows CD and let her rip.
It basically looks just like any Windows NT installation. However, when it gets to the step about copying the kernel, it freezes and chokes. I have no idea why, so that means it's time to reload the firmware for booting UNIX-y things for one last OS attempt.
My machine runs Tru64, the now-abandoned UNIX from DEC/Compaq/HP that ceased development around 2005 or so, shockingly quick given that it was "enterprise." Based solely on timing, I wouldn't ever go with HP hardware/software in the future because that seemed exceptionally quick.
Tru64 does support everything about this machine, but it is also incredibly old. It also requires minutes to boot, though it is fun to listen to the 6 or so installed drives spin up. But once it's done, you have a delightful CDE desktop (that was sarcasm, CDE sucks).
As I said, Tru64 is old, so almost anything modernish that you try to compile will fail, usually because stupid Tru64 doesn't have a stdint.h header. To modernize, why not use pkgsrc since it supports it!
I'll tell you why not: pkgsrc doesn't work. Their definition of "supported platforms" is quite misleading since you can't actually install and bootstrap pkgsrc on Tru64 (aka OSF/1). There are an assortment of blocking bugs for Tru64 that have never been addressed or fixed for pkgsrc on Tru64, so don't even bother.
Nothing! It's fun to turn on, and I have compiled modern OpenSSH for it. I can get onto the wider internet via SSH. But trying to operate it in a world of "encrypt all the sites" is not workable since Netscape 4 definitely doesn't support modern https standards. Basically, it makes for a nice end table (with a broken front door).
Written on October 27, 2020