I am almost ready to buy. I see little reason to stick with the Pentium
family now that there are Linux distributions for the Alpha, good fortran
optimizing compilers available and visual interface builders that will
run the compiled fortran (tck/tk).
I don't know what to buy and, as most non-institutional "persons", I have
a limited budget. I want a lot of bang for my buck, but think it is
very easy to buy "too much."
I have been trying to figure out chip and motherboard types and need
advice. Is the industry reinventing the x86SX crap? Compromise the real
thing and trick consumers into buying the chape but inferior product? The
21164PC, with all L2 Cach off-chip, appears to be something to avoid,
though cheap.
Assume a workstation rather than a server utilization, what is the
difference between the 21164 and the 21164a? Compared with a dual PII, say
233 or 266, how fast is a 300 Mhz or 533 Mhz alpha with "enough" memory
(say, 128MB).
For the past four years, our main campus machine (mail server, dial-in
ISP, computer languages) has been a DEC 233 Mhz alpha with almost enough
disk space and 256Mb memory. With notable exceptions and a few spectacular
crashes, it has served upwards of 200 simultaneous tty-only users well.
(Xdm is running, but very few know it or what to do with it and fewer yet
use it. All X-terminals are faculty linux machines or sun and linux
workstations in a computer science lab -- network students.)
This suggests to me that anything more than a 233 or 300 Mhz alpha is the
prototypic squirrel hunt with cruise missles (excepting massively
numerically intensive jobs).
Does anybody lurking on this list have real experience with these
machines. Care to share? Care to identify useful sources besides
the vendors.
Thanks.
Mark Hansel (218-236-2039)
hansel@mhd1.moorhead.msus.edu