Alpha Question

[tenchi84]

I've got myself an alpha PC164LX with a 533MHz processor, v5.6 firmware, does anybody know how to go about installing linux, the bios only has the option to install winnt 4.0 which i do not have. thanks

[el]

lucky. do a google search for 64bit linux distros and you should be fine.

[XWRed1]

I know that Slackware was ported to Alpha, as is Suse. Can't think of others off the top of my head, but I'm sure that the Alpha versions of those distros have instructions for getting to the installer.

[PolyPill]

Redhat used to have an alpha version not sure if they do any more. You don't want the 64-bit linux, you need the alpha version as these are 2 different cpus.

Alpha is still 32-bit, the difference is alpha uses what's called big endian proccessing, intel uses little endian. The jist of it just means that alpha reads bytes left to right and Intel reads right to left.

I was playing with an old alpha box but failed in all my attampts to get linux installed. My problem was I couldn't figure out how to make a boot disk for the alpha and this machine was too old for boot cds. This is so old I'm talking an alpha 233, which were out when intel was making 486's.

I still have 5 of these machine so I might play with them over the long weekend. So if you figure anything out I'd like it if you would post it. If I find anything I will post it.

[tenchi84]

Thanks guys, I already have a copy of alpha mandrake 7.1, but i never got the install instructions off of their site, I downloaded it a while ago before the revamped the site, so now when I went back there the install instructions are no where to be found

If you guys could help me find it that would be great, i'm going to continue my search.

[Yatta]

Adding Boot selections to Alpha PC164LX
The following procedure will allow you to create a second OS boot selection in the Alpha BIOS configuration. This assumes you have BIOS version 5.60, or compatible. This procedure can also be used to set up an initial OS boot selection.

1. Restart the computer.

2. After the memory check completes and a device inventory is being done, hit F2. At the end of the inventory, the setup screen will appear.

3. Select "Utilities" and then "OS Selection Setup....".

4. If the OS boot selection list contains both "linux" and "milo", you are done.

5. Press Insert to specify a new boot selection. Use the name "milo" for booting Linux from floppy. A template will appear. You must modify the values in that template to fully specify the new boot selection. The desired result looks as follows:



Boot Name: milo
Boot File: A: \linload.exe
OS Path: Disk 0, Partition 2 \milo
OS options:
Use tab and shift-tab to go from field to field. Use backspace to erase fields. This part of the process is very picky. If error messages keep coming up, just ignore them. Always make the selection so that you can keep going (usually "continue").

[WesMarden]

Have you tried looking on the FTP mirror sites. Sometimes they have docs. You might have to poke around a bit, but it may be worth it.