Why an Alpha?
NO ONE with any sense would even ask a stupid question like that.   But let me just say this...   for about 6 months, I'd been scanning those (eek) computer auctions and started checking out boxen that weren't Intel (got a couple already) or Intel clones, like the AMDs (I have a room full of those).   Interestingly, an IBM AS/400 kept catching my eye and as I watched it drop in price over the months, I decided to do some research.   Seems no one has yet ported any of the "free" *nixes (including *BSD) to it yet (although NetBSD had it down as a possible port).   So once I settled that issue, I started hunting for some refurbished Macs - preferably with a G3 or at least upgradeable to that or G4.   Not many of those around (at least not where I was looking).   So then I started huntin' around for some SPARCs.   I always thought those were cool, but as I researched, I found that they weren't necessarily as wonderful as I thought - at least for seti processing...   unless I went for one of the newer UltraSparcs.   So...   I said "what the hell" and started looking for Alphas.

I had seen one advertised some time ago but at that time, I wasn't quite ready to fork out the cost of a brand new Intel P-blah 8xx, for an older alpha box that I knew very very little about.   So I waited, and then as I began to learn about all the intricacies of floating point vs integer processing and found out that the seti@home processing is very FP-intensive (and I wanted to up my total seti work unit processing), I found that an alpha seemed like the perfect machine to do this.   And so, when suddenly I discovered my favorite auction place (egghead.com/surplusauction.com) had a "smart deal" for an Alpha Workstation, I made note of it and started doing some research.

Where's the beef??? (uh info)
Man!   When one decides to go with a non-x86 machine, one finds VERY LITTLE INFO (in comparison to what is written about the x86s).   It was a hunt, but I did track down a few discussion lists and of course, read everything on Compaq's (DEC) web site about their alphas.   The more I read, the more I encountered the god-like praise and mysticism that surrounds the Alpha - the ultimate "god box".   I guess you can blame Digital for this, although they were about ready to let the Alpha fade away out of existence because it "wasn't a VAX" (although the newer VAXes could take an alpha processor).   Well when Compaq took over, they promised to not only keep the alpha around, but to improve upon it - thus you see the newest "EV7" generation (21264) alpha chips, with promises to go to at least 1.4Ghz (!!!).

How much was this origi...  Holy cow!   What the...?
Well, because of the purposeful limitations placed on how many alpha CPUs are manufactured (supply and demand, baby), the price of an alpha always remains very high as compared to a comparable (if a comparison can really be made) intel/intel-clone box.   Although I paid US$1,199 for it, the list price was US$12,000 when it first came out around '96-'97!   That's what I paid for my car a bunch of years ago!!!   And sadly so far, I've found that the cost of an upgrade CPU is like 2x the price of what I paid for the entire box!!   However I've been seeing alpha mobos (with CPU and memory) going for like US$1,500!   Oh well..   I'll keep looking!   ;-)

Go for it!
After some hesitation and more reading (and confirming that the machine on sale could be upgraded to a 600Mhz version), I took the plunge!   And I'm glad that I did.   I've now had the machine up and running for going on 3 weeks now (it came in around the 3rd week of April 2000) and although I haven't really explored all the things I can do with it, it's good to now be learning and working on a different hardware platform, and one that brings "ooos and ahhhhs" to tech-saavy IT folks when I casually say "Oh yeah, and I did such and such on my alpha box..." (heh).   I haven't really done that much with it yet other than get an OS on it, give him the name "blazer" ('cause he's got a blazin' fast type of CPU), and start up seti@home processing, but I expect I'll start putzing around with it some more as I go along!   Stay tuned for my "What I did" (an experience, trust me) and updates!
 
 

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