On Sun, Apr 15, 2007 at 02:30:02PM -0700, Bryan Vyhmeister wrote:
> On Apr 15, 2007, at 12:27 PM, Joachim Schipper wrote:
>
> >On Sun, Apr 15, 2007 at 11:40:48AM -0700, Bryan Vyhmeister wrote:
> >>I could have posted this on the alpha list but I thought I might get
> >>a better answer here since that list has very little traffic.
> >>OpenBSD/
> >>cats is no longer around and is OpenBSD/alpha on its way out as well?
> >>I am not intending to cause any rumors or anything but I do have the
> >>opportunity to pick up some alpha machines but I am not going to if
> >>the platform is on its way out. I had a couple of cats machines that
> >>are doing nothing and I don't want to have alphas in the same boat.
> >>Thanks for the info.
> >
> >While I am not a developer and not privy to Theo's thoughts, I did
> >notice quite a bit of work on the alpha (some developer mentioned the
> >switch to gcc 3).
>
> That is a good sign. Another reason to keep it around is that alpha
> machines were commercially produced which the cats machines were just
> evaluation boards. Big difference. I had a very hard time finding the
> two cats boards I came up with. Alpha systems are much easier to come
> by and are a much more powerful architecture.
Yes, I think that was one of the reasons to can the cats architecture:
it had pretty much done what it was intended to do, provide a
springboard for zaurus and lately landisk, and there just aren't many
machines around.
> >On the other hand, there seems to be a 'the alpha bug' around. I don't
> >think it's solved yet, and it's been around for a long time.
> >Apparently,
> >it causes random crashes.
>
> I was not aware of this bug. That is unfortunate. Hopefully this
> might be resolved at some point.
I do hope so; but I might be wrong there. I've never owned an Alpha, an
don't think it's very likely I'll acquire one in the nearish future, so
I haven't followed too closely.
Joachim
--
TFMotD: hunt (6) - a multi-player multi-terminal game
