ALPHA 21164 Workstation

[Mike McVey]

Hello everyone.

Thanks to all who gave me assistance on dealing with the linux 
partition that DOS FDISK could not delete. Yes, once I used Disk 
Druid to replace it, DOS let me create a partition on the drive.

However, the verify took ridiculously long, and the process kepts 
starting over and getting to certain percetange points and then 
beginning at 0 percent again. Finally it made it all the way through. 
Then, when I did the format, the format took forever because it said 
it was attempting to recover allocated sectors (or something like 
that.) Anyway, I don't imagine that Linux could have killed this 
drive? It must have already been dead, right? I have always kept as a 
bedrock assumption software CANNOT damage hardware, and don't think 
this proves otherwise. Anyways, WD diag said the HD was bad, and a 
new disk is in the mail.

Just reassure me that installing Linux cannot wreck an IDE hard disk 
in the same manner that a low-level format does.

By the way, to correct the one who told me an fdisk /mbr would delete 
the linux partition-- nope. It didn't do that. From what I know, mbr 
fixes the master boot record, which is not the same thing as the 
partition.

Now, for other business:  I am considering buying a Linux compatible 
workstation currently running (but not for long) NT:

Polywell Alpha 500/300MHZ, Alpha 21164 CPU
2 MB Cache module
on board IDE, FDD 2xSerial, 1xParallel
96 MB RAM
300 Watt power supply
4.3 Gig SCSI-2 hard drive
Dimond Stealth 64 video card
4 PCI slots
3 ISA slots

This system is a good 3-4 years old. What might it be worth? How 
would it stack up verses both a 400 dollar, "state of the art" 
Celeron 400 MHz EMachine with equal RAM or even a decent, brand new, 
consumer grade 550 MHz Pentium III?

Any known problems with using this system for linux? I understand 
that for both NT and Linux, applications are processor independent, 
and thus software written for either OS that runs on x86 systems will 
work on the Alpha too? But will Windows 98 Win32 applications work on 
an Alpha NT box?

What about drivers? Perhaps these will be hardware specific and thus 
I am at the mercy of the likely far smaller linux for alpha driver 
support than x86 linux drivers?

Assistance would be appreciated. 

Thanks.

Mike