Hi guys. Has anyone been so rash as to try this? Any indications as to the likely "degree of difficulty"? I'd have a go myself, but I'm rather busy with teaching. (Which is ironic, since teaching is what I want it for...)

Degree of difficulty is likely to be less than a starting completely non-existent port (eg. IA64), but still significant. The 64-bitness is likely to be more of an issue than the Alpha-specific stuff, though. If there's sufficient demand for a port I'll help out; I did have an account on the Compaq testdrive machines at one point (they have Alpha/Linux and Alpha/*BSD machines) which has probably expired now, but it's a good place to get some free Alpha cycles. Cheers, Simon