2. What State Is Linux/Alpha In?

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Pretty much everything is up and running. X11 is pre-pre-alpha but it works surprisingly well on S3-based video cards. The only thing that is still dearly missing is a GNU ld that can produce shared libraries and a freely available dynamic linker. Besides that, performance tuning is probably the biggest junk of work that remains. In particular libc needs more code optimized specifically for the Alpha architecture.

Getting Linux/Alpha up and running still needs some expertise and there are various odds and ends that need to be tied up. For that reason, we would not recommend Linux/Alpha for non-hackers yet. Having said that, once you get Linux/Alpha up and running, it can provide an amazingly stable system.

Linux/Alpha is presently known to work on Noname (aka AXPpci33) and Cabriolet (aka AlphaPC64) motherboards. It also supports the Jensen system (the original EISA-based Alpha PC which goes by various names).

Drivers that are known to work (let us known if there is something new):

• keyboard
• console (EGA+ or VGA+ mode)
• selection (console mouse support)
• serial
• line-printer (centronics port)
• floppy
• SCSI: disks, CD-ROMs, and tapes seem to work fine. Host adapters that are known to work:
  • ncr53c810
  • aha1740 (on Jensen, at least).
• ftape (QIC-80 tape drives): known to be working on Noname as a module (module tools still need to be finished up, but the basic mechanisms are in place)
• IDE driver (new driver only, the "old reliable" one doesn't seem to work; also, notice that the SRM console won't let you boot from IDE drives!)
• Networking:
  • Ethernet drivers: depca, ne2000, de4x5. The following drivers are supposed to be working starting with version 1.3.31:
    • Western Digital (aka SMC Elite) wd80x3
    • SMC Ultra
    • SMC EtherEZ
    • 3Com 3c503, 3c503/16
    • Cabletron e2100
    • Hewlett Packard PC Lan (model 27245, uses hp.c)
    • Hewlett Packard PC Lan+ (model 27247 or 27252A, uses hp-plus.c)
    • Ansel AC3200 EISA card.
    If you experience problems with one of these, you might want to drop a note to gpg109@rsphy1.anu.edu.au
  • Other drivers: ppp.

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