QuickGuide to AlphaServers

Usefull information for fiddling with a Digital AlphaServer 4100A. (Focus on FreeBSD)

CVSup installation on FreeBSD/alpha

As the happy frood you are you thought you'd pop by /usr/ports/net/cvsup-bin and do a make install. Only there did you discover that the port does not exist. For some odd reason it's not there.

Stricken with terror you begin the tedious project of compiling cvsup yourself - and fails miserably.

Luckily there are binary packages of cvsup available for FreeBSD/alpha.

Fetch cvsup from:
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/development/CVSup/binaries/

FreeBSD installation halts at kernel load.

The problem is present in 4.1R, 4.2R, 4.3R to fix it use a kern.flp from 4.4RC or 5.0-current to boot the installation.

LCD Display

Alpha server systems usually do have small dot-matrix display at the front. By default this displays the type of the server (like AlphaServer 4100). This can be changed to any text up to 16 characters with the console mode command (SRM).

set ocp_text "message"

The new text will appear after resetting or running init on the system.