AlphaServer 4100 LCD

[Thomas Laus]

To:             	Kevin Ogden <kdogden at gmail.com>

> On Tue, Jul 03, 2007 at 12:06:51PM -0400, Kevin Ogden wrote..
> > Is there any easy way to write anything to the built-in LCD on the
> > AlphaServer 4x00?  I was thinking of trying to write a script to display
> > uptime/load averages/etc.  Any sysctl variables or anything?
> 
> You can change it from the SRM >>> prompt.  Something like 
> >>> SET OCP_TEXT or similar.  
> 
> > Another question, is there really that much of a lack of interest in
> keeping
> 
> Yes, there is that much lack of interest.
> 
> > alpha support going?  This box is still a capable server and I really
> > don't want to run Linux or Tru64 once FreeBSD 6 becomes stale.
> 
> Water under the bridge.  Unfortunately.
>
Kevin:

You might want to try OpenBSD & NetBSD as well.  The system layout is similar 
to FreeBSD and have additional hardware that may be supported in your 
AlphaServer.  I was able to get my AlphaStation 255 to successfully boot this 
week with OpenBSD 4.1 that was released in March 2007.  None of the FreeBSD 
6.x releases would boot a GENERIC kernel for me and my AS255 was just too slow 
to perform an update and custom kernel build from source.  I was previously 
running FreeBSD 4.11 which went EOL recently.  A buildworld would take me 
about 30 hours with the debug symbols.

I was going to try NetBSD next to see if I could boot the most recent GENERIC 
kernel on it.  The various model Alpha's all seem to have their own little 
quirks and there is a lot of drivers don't 'play well' with each other.

Tom

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