DEC AlphaServer 1000A Question

I came into possession of a DEC AlphaServer 1000A server a while back, and just now have pulled it out of the closet to start working on bringing it back to life. Its in relatively good physical condition, all the hardware checks out and seems ready for use, and will boot up partially but it comes to the SRM console prompt and thats about it. I've got the manuals for the machine but they dont cover anything other than installing Open VMS, Digital Unix, or Win NT Alpha. My goal is some flavor of BSD with Alpha support, but given my lack of BSD experience and the fact that this machine is totally foreign to me I was hoping someone out there on the interweb has some experience in this kind of a situation and could lend some help to bring this machine back to life.

First off.. I don't have any Alpha experience..

Does the manual state anything about booting from an installation CD?
You could just download the install for FreeBSD/Alpha, flip it in and see if it'll boot from there..
Knowing FreeBSD (and installing it on AMD64 and I386) the installation shouldn't be all that different.