Alpha Linux's New Wiki Unveiled
When I bought a DS20L from eBay, I struggled to find helpful information. I sifted through Google search results, searched HP's website, read hundreds of posts on mailing lists, looked at Linux and BSD release notes, and searched everywhere I could think of. In the process, the one thing I discovered was that there was not a definitive spot for information on Alpha based computers, Alpha/Linux support, SRM versions, Alpha assembly and optimization, or Alpha software. Hopefully this new Alpha Linux Wiki will be that definitive spot.
I have been working behind the scenes with AlphaLinux.org's Peter Petrakis for the last two to three months to create a wiki to house the wealth of knowledge about the aforementioned topics in a central location. As you can see by the TODO page, there is quite a bit of content to be created. The wiki is in place, and I have written only a small fraction of what is needed. This is where we need you, the Alpha enthusiast, to add content and help make the wiki grow.
There are some things that I cannot add to the wiki even with an immense amount of research. In particular:
- Pictures of Alpha hardware: Motherboards, CPUs, RAM, Cases, Full Systems, and any other Strange parts
- Difficult to find SRM versions. I hope to build some sort of archive to store all available versions of SRM (maybe ARC too?)
- Documentation. Do you have a document describing the internal workings of X piece of hardware?
- Assembly programming examples. Examples describing the usage of various instructions, concepts, or optimization techniques.
- Important Alpha related bugs. Particularly nasty bugs you can't wait to see squashed should be posted on the Bugs to watch page.
- Alpha related programming projects. Alpha specific code needed for a project? Post it to the TODO page.
I sincerely hope that the Alpha community finds this resource helpful and makes good use of it.
On a related note, as many Alpha users know, this is the first time that AlphaLinux.org has been updated in years. We hope to change this by adding a forum and migrating the main site to a content management system. Peter Petrakis would like to use a Ruby based CMS, and I have no preference. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Also, if you have suggestions of ideas for other ways to improve AlphaLinux.org I'm all ears.