Re: AlphaStation for sale at onsale

[Adam Fritzler <afritz delphid ml org>]

On Fri, 15 May 1998, Ken Hansen wrote:

> Did you try the supplied drivers for the graphics card with NT 4 yet?
> BTW, "everything runs better with Linux"

Yes.  It clearly says it can't be done (although that's MS's answer, not
mine :).  I just used a 4MB #9 GXE64pro card, who's drivers are much
better to say the least.  I ran 1600x1200x65k with no visible performance
degration with the #9 -- on the ZLXp-E2, any res above 640x480xtrue was
dreadful.  (For the #9, this is a performance gain above the UDB -- I
don't know why, but the AS200 is faster with that card.)

I don't suppose anyone has started hacking on the XF86_TGA X server to get
it to work with the 24-bit -E2 and -E3 cards yet?  :)

> I haven't powered mine up yet (too many distractions!), but what does
> the
> performance feel like - I had a 233 Mhz UDB w/512K cache and it was OK,
> I assume you had a 166 Mhz UDB w/256K cache (a pretty close spec - wise
> system to the AS 200 4/166 we have now - is there really a significant
> improvement over what you had before? 

I definitly like it in all ways better than the UDB I had (166mhz, 256k).
Personal opinion is that for some reason, it likes NT better (I had to
install NT to impress my friends with something they could relate
to...) I haven't noticed any major differences in Linux (but that's only a
interactive response benchmark!)  I still don't have any X going.  
 
> I realize these machines have
> different CPUs than the UDB (21064a in AS 200 4/166 vs. 21164a in UDB),
> is there a big performance gain? Is it because these machines are not
> brain-damaged like the UDBs?

Ooo...no, at least not in mine.  AFAIK, the UDB I had used a 21066 --
that's a 21064a with on-chip support sets (PCI, etc) and with one of the
busses halved down to 64-bit (I don't remember which bus it was though).
The AS200 I've got seems to have a full-blown 21064a.  (i really like the
vaxish 'sho dev' and 'sho conf')  There's a desc of all those chips
around somewhere (probably at www.azstarnet.com/~axplinux).

The AS200 4/166's are definitly not in any way brain-damaged.

> Onsale has them now going out the door at $390/each - yikes, either I
> got
> a good deal (you got a GREAT deal) or there are a lot of people getting
> ripped off.

$390???   I originally was going to wait until the "first month inflation"
on OnSale went away...but it doesn't appear to be happening! (Glad I
didn't wait.)

I'd suggest the latter... OnSale is a notoriously bad place to buy
computers of any sort.  I'd suggest EBay for all the serious
buyers/sellers out there -- AZDigital does put one of these systems up on
EBay every once and a while, so look for them if you want one and object
to OnSale.  

I'm doubting these machines are actually worth $400...

af

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Adam Fritzler				| "Call me irresponsable...
  afritz@delphid.ml.org			|    call me unreliable...
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      http://delphid.ml.org/~afritz/    |        true!" -- WinNT Theme Song
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