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.
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Radeon X1550 in an SGI O2?
In a thread on the SGI Enthusiast site, Nekochan.net, about Linux compatibility with SGI's MIPS based line of workstations, a user, tillin9, suggested the possibility of installing modern, off the shelf graphics cards in the SGI O2 under Linux. The O2 is equipped with a single PCI slot for expansion, so physically installing a new graphics card is no problem. Unfortunately, graphics cards require special initialization code, stored in the card's ROM, to be run at boot time. Since the Radeon's initialization routine has to be able to execute on the processor architecture in the computer in which it's installed, different code is required for x86, PowerPC, PA-RISC, SPARC, and MIPS. Since there weren't any PCI Radeon's made for MIPS powered workstations, surely ten years later, a modern Radeon would never work in an old SGI workstation...
Read More – – Tags: kms linux mips radeon sgi xorg
Open Sourcing Compaq's Alpha Tools for Linux
I'm in the (long and arduous) process of becoming a Gentoo/Alpha developer. This involves, firstly, becoming an Architecture Tester. This in turn, requires that I complete a quiz, mail it to the head of the Alpha team and wait. The developer who manages the alpha arch testers, of which there are none, currently, has been missing in action for 18 days.