Waxing Philosophical

[Richard Irving]

   :)

Mike Barnes wrote:
> I was looking back over the list archives the other day, and noticed
> that it's coming up on one year since I first started trying to build
> some Fedora Core 1 packages on the Alpha. This leads me to something
> I've been wondering for a while ...
> 
> What is it about the Alpha that's got me doing this? Why spend twelve
> months compiling, tweaking, hunting down patches and clues to build a
> system on this platform when I could go out, spend a couple of hundred
> dollars on a PC, and just download and install a recent Fedora Core
> build?
> 
> Is this the same mania that classic car restorers suffer from? It's
> not like I do anything spectacularly demanding on my Alphas - I'm not
> into numerical computing or anything that demands huge addressable
> memory spaces. My primary home system is a nice dual-processor G4 Mac.
> It works fine. My main mail and web server is a dual Athlon box that
> is perfectly adequate to the task.
> 
> I need a Linux or Unix-ish system to mess with from time to time, and
> that's where my Alphas have come in. I like them. There's "something"
> about the nice, familar blue of the SRM console that I just don't get
> from a PC's BIOS setup. The lines of the DS10 case are pleasing in a
> way that my admittedly "sexy" G4 isn't.

   Maybe because it feels like -real- gear ?

   Little subtle MILspecs, gives things a different "feel" that
is hard to put a finger on...

   Until a bomb goes off in the facility, and -it- is the
only thing still working.

    :O

  Real rolled steel... not plastic, just steel painted over to
look like plastic..

   A Box solid enough it is known to alter gravity, in the local
region..

> So why? What does this platform have that I've never seen in the Sun
> or SGI systems that I've messed with? What makes me feel strongly
> about the fate of the Alpha line when I couldn't case less if MIPS was
> discontinued?

   Big Iron has a draw, no one knows really why. We just tease people,
and call them "size queens". ;)

   But, FWIW, how many megs of L2 cache those -other- boxes have ?

   Betcha not 4 -megs- a processor, eh ?

  PC weenies have just learned of the advantage of L2 and L3
caches... for multiprocessing, and multi users.

  And, how many of the other boxes have 128 or even -256- bit wide paths
into memory ?

   Now, the PC weenies are starting to catch up with predictive
hyper threading, and multiple pipe lining, but the Alpha pioneered that art,
the rest are merely following.

   The first man to climb Everest is a legend, everyone else is
an echo.

   The Alphas are -real- old fashioned Mini's... a mere hop away from
a mainframe.

  I have Fedora running on a Laptop that claims to be 4 times
the box, via bogoMips, than the 1200 Alpha is... but don't
kid yourself..... the Alpha is a smoother ride, by an order of
magnitude.

  Or, perhaps running a computer that a few years ago cost more
than a HOUSE, just give you a warm fuzzy.  An Alpha Male dog,
kinda thing. Dominant Monkey claims king of the hill,
and lets out a roar and beats its chest having conquered
the rest.

  Sort of like owning a Masserati Testorosa. (SP ?)

  As a bonus, it is awful hard to infect a 64 bit computer with 32 bit
code.... much less a NON-INTEL speaking chipset. ;)

   It leaves the Virii "shooting rubber bands at the stars".

   I call that "inherent" security.

   Besides, my office would be too cold without one, the midwest
has -frigid- winters. I come in from the subzero outside,
throw a fractal generator up, sit in the exhaust and pretend
I am in the Florida keys.

   Ahhhh.... the warm breeze,

    I can almost hear the waves on the shore.

   The distant cry of the gulls.... skree skree skree...

    * boggled look *

  Gulls ?

   - SHOOT -, time for a replacement power supply fan.

     :P

   And, FWIW,
    how would I have a weenie roast, on Friday, without it ?

   I'd have to have an open flame, and the facility doesn't permit
that indoors.

    ;)


> 
> Not looking for answers. Just needed to write down the questions. Carry on. :)


   As the "fix it" guy on TV said:

    "Ooook, Ooook, Ooook, ahhhh ah ah.... POWER TOOLS!"

   ;)

> 
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