NetBSD/alpha History

The NetBSD/alpha port began with NetBSD-current sources from a bit before the NetBSD 1.0 release. NetBSD/alpha's first formal release was NetBSD 1.2, though the NetBSD/alpha distribution in that release was more of a snapshot than a real release. Chris Demetriou was the primary author and the original developer of NetBSD/alpha.

The original binary and source snapshot of NetBSD/alpha was made available to the public on February 21, 1995. It supported only the DEC 3000/500 family of systems (the 3000/[4-9]00). Soon after the initial release, support for the DEC 3000/300 family was added, so that NetBSD/alpha would run on all of Digital's TURBOchannel-based Alpha systems.

PCI-based systems were first supported in the binary and source snapshot made on June 8, 1995. As of that time, the AlphaStation 200 and 400 were the only PCI-based systems supported. Since then, support for more members of the AlphaStation 200 family (the 250 and 255), for the AlphaStation 500 and 600, for AXPpci systems (including UDB and Multia), for EB164-family systems (including Digital EB164 and third-party AlphaPC 164 systems) and for EB64+-family systems (including Digital EB64+ and third-party AlphaPC 64 systems) has been added.

Chris Demetriou, Ross Harvey, and Jason Thorpe added support for several more of the PCI Alpha systems in early 1998.

Support for AlphaServer 8200 and 8400 TurboLaser systems was integrated into the system on March 12, 1997. Support for AlphaServer 4000 and 4100 MCBUS systems was integrated into the system on April 15, 1998. This work was done by Matthew Jacob of NASA Ames Research center.

Support for the EV6 family systems such as the XP1000 and the 264DP was added in June of 1999 by Ross Harvey.