morrison, my old AlphaPC 164 has finally had it's last shutdown -h. Rescued on a mercy mission to Canberra it has served me well for many years. Sure, it had it's quirks; the ATX power supply modified with a paper clip, no off switch, noise and heat to rival a coal mine and an infuriating ability to not detect a keyboard and thus default to the serial port, rather than the VGA card (that one had me going for hours).
Ultimately it's 266MHz Alpha has been replaced by a processor almost 10 times its clock speed and half its word size, but not appreciably faster handling the mail and file serving tasks it did so well. It's tough to survive in a world when you can be replaced by a processor, all-in-one motherboard and RAM for just over $200.
Now I have to double check all the security alerts to make sure I'm not vulnerable to the latest stupid buffer overflow. But I do have a nice big RAID5 array to hold MP3's.
If anyone is interested in a slightly used Alpha with a few extras it could be exchanged for some form of alcohol.