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<h2>OpenBSD/alpha</h2>

<hr>
<h3><strong>History and Status:</strong></h3>

<p>
The alpha port was derived from, and still tracks, the NetBSD/alpha port
written by Chris Demetriou <cgd@netbsd.org>.  Initially the reason for
existence of this port was to provide the OpenBSD operating system to alpha
users, i.e. no special effort was put in to develop the port in the machine
dependent parts.  The main thing that got done was to make the port
self-hosting, i.e. ensuring that all the tools needed to build a full system
was included in the tree, as well as updated with the changes Chris
distributed in a separate alpha toolchain package.
<p>
Today a lot more developers have got themselves alpha machines and we are
seeing interest in a more active port.  This fact has so far only led to the
adaption of the if_ed ethernet driver to be usable by the
alpha port, but there is ongoing work on ISA DMA, floppy, IDE & ATAPI support.
<p>
So far <a href="http://www.appli.se/niklas/">Niklas Hallqvist</a>
<a href=mailto:niklas@openbsd.org>&lt;niklas@openbsd.org&gt;</a> has been
keeping the port alive, but with the larger developer community coming up
this will hopefully be a more distributively (and better) maintained port.
</p>

<h3><strong>Projects (in no particular order):</strong></h3>
<ul>
<li>ISA DMA support (needed for floppy support among other stuff).
<li>Floppy support.
<li>IDE/ATAPI support.
<li>DDB support.
<li>ELF switchover (automatically brings us shared libraries).
</ul>

<h3><strong>Snapshots</strong></h3>
<p>
OpenBSD/alpha has not yet seen a proper release, but Thomas Graichen
<a href=mailto:graichen@openbsd.org>&lt;graichen@openbsd.org&gt;</a>
has been creating OpenBSD/alpha snapshots from time to time. You may find them
on <a href=ftp.html>the usual OpenBSD ftp servers</a>.  Please talk to Thomas
if you are wondering over installation issues.
</p>

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