Re: Is XL300 or EBP41-AN any good?

[Ryan Kirkpatrick <rkirkpat nag cs colorado edu>]

On Tue, 1 Dec 1998, Bernard Chew, Lai Wan wrote:

> I'm planning to learn about Linux on Alpha, and am looking at either a
> complete XL300 system, or building my own using the EBP41-AN
> motherboard. Are these two options I'm evaluating any good? For a person
> who is new to Alpha wanting to start out, I mean. 

	Don't know much about the latter, but I have an XL366 (just a
faster version of the XL300 if I remember correctly), and it is a very
nice machine. It was not very hard at all to setup with Debian 2.0. The
AlphaBIOS, while some people hate it, it is easier to figure out than ARC
on UDBs. I was able to get it to boot install floppies with little
instructions. After that, install went through with no problems that were
hardware related (a few bugs in debian install, but it is still a bit
unstable anyway, but improving everyday! :).
	As for the hardware, don't know if the XL300 have the same case my
XL366 has, but mine came in a bomb proof server style case, included case
lock and everything. It is heavy steel (weights +50lbs!), that is
relatively well designed. Cooling is not a big issue as it has a nice 5"
fan in the front of the case that blows plenty of air across the
processor. Never had any heat related problems with it, and it has been
running 24x7 in East Texas, in a dorm room where the temperature varys a
good bit. Overall, a pretty solid machine hardware wise. Hope this helps.

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|  Ryan Kirkpatrick  |  Boulder, Colorado  | rkirkpat@nag.cs.colorado.edu  |
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