.\"	$NetBSD: whatis,v 1.5 1999/04/23 00:04:07 ross Exp $	
There have been many, many Alpha-specific enchancements since the
1.3 release. These include:
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Many new system types are supported:
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EB66 Evaluation Board
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ALPHABook 1
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Digital AlphaServer 4100 systems
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Digital AlphaServer 1000 systems
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Digital AlphaServer 1000A systems
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Digital AlphaServer 800 systems
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Digital Server 330x systems
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Jason Thorpe's new virtual memory code provides
full support for the alpha's large address space with context switching
and translation buffer state optimizations.
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Extensive scheduler work enables process nice levels to work as expected,
fixing ancient BSD scheduler bugs that affected NetBSD/alpha more than
other ports with slower clock Hz defaults. Nice +19 and +20 processes
now take no time away from nice +0 programs regardless of load average.
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Many new device drivers and sound cards are supported. Floppy
disk drives are now supported.
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IDE peripheral devices are now supported on Multia and AXPPCI33 systems.
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A new multi-volume boot loader allows all supported system types
and device drivers to be present on floppy disk media, and enables the
.Em sysinst
screen-menu installation program to be included on
floppy disks as well. Although two floppies are now used, they load
much faster than the single floppy did in 1.3.
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Installation from CD and magnetic tape media is now supported.
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A new set of boot programs provides considerable operational and
performance enhancement.
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.Pp
NetBSD \*V on alpha is, as usual, also fully backward compatible
with old NetBSD/alpha binaries, so you don't need to recompile all
your local programs.