The little Alpha that did!

[Toaster]

Hello folks!
Once more into the breech dear friends!
I picked up an cheap (misadvertized) Alpha 533 system on Ebay recently.
This little monster used the PC164LX system board that used standard DIMMs in alike pairs. (remember...64bit)
After toying with the system and the included software (what a joke, Win-NT 4.0), I dumped the software and downloaded "True64". That was the first time I messed with True64 and with just a tad more polish, that could be a great O/S.
After some minor config errors, the system was up and running in about 90 minutes quite smoothly. Let me tell ya folks, the Alpha is no slouch!
This muther humper screams! Clocked at 533mhz it ate anything in the sub 800mhz range with aplomb. Next, Linux for the Alpha. I pulled the system drive, replaced the unit with an alike SCSI U/W IBM 4.5GB unit.
Linux was a bit of a chore to load simply because its been some time since I used the SRM console. Once up and running (about 90 minutes again), the system settled down and ran very smoothly. I matched it up with my dualie PIII-1GHZ system. The PIII had a hearty advantage with 512MB of memory and a AMI Megaraid controller. The Alpha was not far behind though with 1/2 the memory and just a simple U/W SCSI controller. I think if the systems were more alike in memory and SCSI subsystems, the margin would have narrowed considerably.
I didn`t want to pollute the PIII with NT so I stopped there.
As a whole, the Alpha was 80% as fast as the PIII simply because of a gargantuan 4MB L2 cache and 512kb of primary cache.
I thought, well lets crank this puppy. The system board was rated to run the current "consumer" 667mhz chip. (whats the big deal with saying...666)
So, thats where I set the system board jumpers. WHOOSH! She took off like a scalded dog for cool water! I was impressed!
Now this puppy was humming along! The PIII had a comfortable margin until the Alpha went to 667mhz. This narrowed to the point where one could no longer see a difference. In computational work, the PIII had about a 35% advantage in which it completed a SETI work unit in about 67 minutes. The Alpha running a "pre-Beta" SETI client hammered home a result in a very respectable 82 minutes.
The main differences seem to be the Linux distro itself. Both were using Linux RH 7.1 one for the Alpha and one for IA (Intel).
The Linux distro was very polished but still had a few problems with advanced graphics subsystems for the Alpha. Namely the "EclipseCX". This particular graphics adaptor runs 4 planes of video. X, Y, Z and an "aux" plane plus texture management. A great adaptor but Linux support is pre-Beta with known bugs.
The adaptor sits on a PCI64 bus and is totally self contained. This card will actually post out of a system with the simple power cable attached (drive power).
All in all, the Alpha is a VERY capable chip and the system board was very stable. In the works are a crystal (oscillator) to push the Alpha to 800mhz and beyond if it wishes. The Alpha is not "multiplier locked", or at least my particular unit wasn`t. The system board maxes out at 667 but the oscillator is "zip tied" to its socket. A clear invitation if I ever saw one.
The Alpha "stock" heatsink/fan was a work of art in itself. The Heatsink actually "bolts" to the CPU via 2 nuts. The CPU body has 2 studs to attach the heatsink. The heatsink was pure copper with a quiet but windy 3" fan with guard.
The system board will automatically shut down the system should the CPU temp rise above 170 degrees. After running at 667mhz, under either Linux or True64, CPU temps never exceeded 125 degrees. One note of merit on the system board, the CPU fan was variable according to temps and the system board sported a "buzzer" that would buzz repeatedly for 10 seconds prior to shutting down the system. I disconnected the fan briefly and the system came upto a diags screen that read:
CPU cooling fan failure, shutting down. The buzzer beeped 10 times and the system shut down. The BIOS wouldn`t allow the OS to load until the fan was reconnected. Even with the fan disconected, the CPU never got too hot to not be able to touch. The system board internal diagnostics sensed the fan failure and simply shut it down. Nice touch!
To top all this off, the CPU is made by Samsung.
I hope you folks enjoyed this....more when the oscillator comes in.