Digital Alpha Systems

[shultzjr]

I was hoping it was 256M sticks (biggest it will take) but it is probably 32M sticks (it already has 4 of those in it). The box has 8 ram slots and maxes out at 2G.

[stack]

It is the old SIMM's memory right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIMM

Cause I found a bunch of it when I was cleaning out my office. I don't know how big the sticks are, but I will look when I get home and see if I can find any of decent size for you.

[shultzjr]

Sorry to take so long. The guy is a Digital dealer in GA and he has some old stuff that he was just going to throw away anyway. I meet him through a vms group. We take a while to answer each others' mail so actually getting the ram may take a while. He implied that it might be 128M sticks so if he sends me four of them that would give the machine 640M of ram, if he happens to send 8 of them, yippy, that would make 1G. To get VMS running on it I would have to join a group that has yearly dues and then send another fee for the media. The guy who actually coordinated the effort says you only have to pay the first year and then you are in the database for life. There is no actual licencing fees but it turns out not to be totally free to put OpenVMS on any machine. There happens to be 3 versions of vms: Itanium, alpha and vax. I may just stick to Alpha/Debian since I can get that free and since the computer already has BSD on it, I know that it will install. To get OpenVMS to install for this model, one has to "hack" the cmos area which I have already done, no harm. So I am just waiting for the moment on him. We'll see.

thanks,
charles.....

PS. I understand that the biggest ram sticks this model will take are 256Meg'rs. It would be great to find 8 of them but highly unlikely.

[shultzjr]

sorry to take so long. I found a guy in GA that promised to send me some ram for the DIGITAL Server 3000 white box machine. We don't seem to answer each other all that rapidly. He thinks they are 128M sticks. From research I think the max is 8 sticks of 256M each for a total of 2G. He was just going to throw them away when he learned that I was looking for some of them. We meet through a vms user group where I posted. I understand that he is a dealer of Digital type parts/systems where he lives. I understand that one must join a users type group to order the "hobbyist" version of OpenVMS. Once one joins the group, a fee, then you can order the media kit which is another fee. I think the fees are: $50 for the group and $30 for the media kit. After I get the ram I will look into the vms thing again. I may just wipe the drive and install alpha/debian on the thing for fun. I just wish that it didn't use so much electricity, then I could use it as a serious file server and leave it on 24/7/365.

The first message I did here didn't show up so I hope this doesn't double post.

charles.....

[stack]

I have no idea how big the memory sticks I have are or if they even work. But I will bring them anyway.

Glad that you are at least having some fun with it!

Good Luck!
Have Fun!
~S~

[shultzjr]

I don't know if it is both good or bad but computers seem to be both good for work and play.

Now if it had only been a dual cpu blue box alpha, hmmmm.

Went to first sat yesterday. Not much in the way of "cool older" machines, most sellers are dealers who are trying to make a profit in the peecee market.

Will bring the alpha back to the next meeting this weekend and let someone else play with it.
Seems that some older alphas are still in high demand and thus kind of pricey.

Didn't realize until recently that the message list wrapped around to multiple pages.

later.....