[Info-vax] Free Alpha emulators running under Linux ?

[John H. Reinhardt]

On 1/2/2022 3:09 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> At the moment, I run my home Alpha system on a FreeAXP instance
> running under Windows.
> 
> It would be nice to switch to running an Alpha emulator under Linux
> while switching to the VSI version of Alpha VMS.
> 
> What is the current state of play for free Alpha emulators running
> under Linux ?
> 
> When I last looked at this a number of years ago, the only Linux based
> emulator I could find at the time was es40 and that wasn't very usable
> at the time.
> 

Things haven't improved.  There is the AXPBox (forked from es40) which has been discussed here before.  Currently at V1.10 it still isn't as stable as the commercial Windows apps.  All the other previously available non-commercial non-Windows (and even commercial, I think) Alpha emulators have disappeared.

https://github.com/lenticularis39/axpbox
https://raymii.org/s/blog/AXPBox-version-1.0.0-released.html

Wikipedia knows of these: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_system_emulators#AlphaServer>
But I don't think that's up to date.

Zane Healy has this list which was last updated Feb 2021
<http://www.avanthar.com/healyzh/decemulation/Alpha.html>


> There's some basic Alpha support in simh, but the last time I looked,
> it was missing many of the features that would have made it a viable
> full system emulator.
> 

   The Alpha support in simh has languished.  As far as I know, nobody has done any work on it in a long time.

> Thanks,
> 
> Simon.
> 

I have to check but now there may be issues with running the VSI CLP under AXPBox if it emulates an ES40.  There have been discussions (on the VSI Forums) and VSI is limiting the PAKs to "desktop" servers i.e. DS10 class.  I don't know if the licenses have enough units to run an ES40.  VSI will give 150 units and that's all.  If an ES40 is rated under that, then it will be okay but that's also the limit for a cluster so clustering an AXPbox ES40 with any other Alpha might be problematical.

The gist of it:

"This limitation was set deliberately after some discussion of what was the reasonable limit for a home system, how big a home cluster could be, and what hardware to consider viable for home use. It was decided that a two-node cluster system is enough to try and learn how to set up and use one of the most important and famous OpenVMS features, i.e. the OS level clustering."

and also:

"We do not think that having a departmental class server is reasonable for home use either as they are too noisy, bulky, and consume a lot of power. Other than that, the existing emulators that are provided for free, such as AXPbox and FreeAXP, emulate only the workgroup class systems as well, while the commercial emulators often provide support for higher-class systems. This means that giving more units would put this program to a risk of being improperly used which we definitely do not want to."


The full text is here:
<https://forum.vmssoftware.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=130&sid=6c00ba38fb1a41a7ce7f57908625e328#p988>

These are the posts which triggered the discussion:
https://forum.vmssoftware.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=254
https://forum.vmssoftware.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=116&p=983#p979

So VSI has decided how big a Hobbyist can go with their home systems.  I guess that's their right but it rubs raw a bit after the freedom of the DEC/Compaq/HP Hobbyist program.

-- 
John H. Reinhardt