16 Aug
2012
16 Aug
'12
4:58 a.m.
I have an AlphaStation 200 4/233 which was given to me without a video
board or floppy drive. I stuck an old Teac FD-235HF in the floppy bay to
fill the hole (no data cable), but have no idea what I really need for a
video board.
I'm planning to use this machine as a low end testbed machine for Debian
Linux since the Alpha port needs to be brought back up, so I know I
probably need a board that can handle more than 256 colors. I think this
eliminates the ZLXp-E1 (TGA 8-plane), but at the same time it may be a
good idea to be able to test with a TGA board as well since there are
going to be quite a few of these machines out there which have a TGA
board.
I will probably also want to run ULTRIX or OSF/1 on the machine at some
point, assuming I can find installation media.
Based on the datasheet I found online, these appear to have been (some?)
of the video boards offered as options for this system:
ZLXp-E1 8-plane PBXGA-AA PBXGA-AN [NT]
ZLXp-E2 24-plane PBXGA-BA PBXGA-BN [NT]
ZLXp-E3 24-plane PBXGA-CA PBXGA-CN [NT]
ZLXp-L1 24-plane PBXGC-AA
ZLXp-L2 24-plane PBXGC-BA
Does anyone have an extra video board laying around that they would be
willing to part with for postage costs? This machine has been sitting
unused for far too long and I'd really like to put it to work.
16 Aug
16 Aug
7:35 a.m.
An S3 Trio card will work with OpenVMS and almost certainly with
Debian, although the picture quality is fairly poor.
I have a PowerStorm 3D3O (ZLXp-E1) which will do 8 plane at 1280x1024.
I've not tried it in my AlphaServer 300 4/266 because I installed a
ZLXp-E2. I would recommend this card if you can find one - I got one
new from the USA for about $40.
Postage would depend on where you are in the world.
Regards,
Mark
7:53 p.m.
On Thu, 16 Aug 2012, Mark Wickens wrote:
An S3 Trio card will work with OpenVMS and almost
certainly with
Debian, although the picture quality is fairly poor.
I have a PowerStorm 3D3O (ZLXp-E1) which will do 8 plane at 1280x1024.
I've not tried it in my AlphaServer 300 4/266 because I installed a
ZLXp-E2. I would recommend this card if you can find one - I got one
new from the USA for about $40.
Postage would depend on where you are in the world.
I'm on the US side of the pond. With postage rates as high as they are
now, it probably would make more sense to find a video card on this side
of the pond.
I think I've had this machine since 2001 or 2002, so it is very overdue
for a video board. I have no idea why a former owner removed it, but
perhaps it was one of the better video boards and they had a faster system
they wanted to use it in. The missing floppy drive seemed to be more
puzzling though.
The only thing I've been able to find so far are scrappers on eBay who
want $$$ for old PCI video boards, which needless to say isn't
economically viable for a machine such as this. I think I'd be tempted to
throw a random S3 based board in there if it weren't that I really need to
be able test on proper hardware.
8:29 p.m.
On 08/16/2012 07:53 PM, Tothwolf wrote:
I'd guess pretty much any S3-based card would work. I have several,
somewhere, some possibly even DEC-branded. Let me know if you'd like me
to dig.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
An S3 Trio
card will work with OpenVMS and almost certainly with
Debian, although the picture quality is fairly poor.
I have a PowerStorm 3D3O (ZLXp-E1) which will do 8 plane at 1280x1024.
I've not tried it in my AlphaServer 300 4/266 because I installed a
ZLXp-E2. I would recommend this card if you can find one - I got one
new from the USA for about $40.
Postage would depend on where you are in the world.
I'm on the US side of the pond. With postage rates as high as they are
now, it probably would make more sense to find a video card on this side
of the pond.
I think I've had this machine since 2001 or 2002, so it is very overdue
for a video board. I have no idea why a former owner removed it, but
perhaps it was one of the better video boards and they had a faster
system they wanted to use it in. The missing floppy drive seemed to be
more puzzling though.
The only thing I've been able to find so far are scrappers on eBay who
want $$$ for old PCI video boards, which needless to say isn't
economically viable for a machine such as this. I think I'd be tempted
to throw a random S3 based board in there if it weren't that I really
need to be able test on proper hardware. 
9:24 p.m.
On Aug 16, 2012, at 7:53 PM, Tothwolf wrote:
The only thing I've been able to find so far are
scrappers on eBay who want $$$ for old PCI video boards, which needless to say isn't
economically viable for a machine such as this. I think I'd be tempted to throw a
random S3 based board in there if it weren't that I really need to be able test on
proper hardware.
If that's all you want, I have an old S3 Virge PCI card sitting
around here somewhere. I don't know how similar that is to the
Trio, but my guess is it's not super-close; there are framebuffer
drivers for both in the kernel tree, though curiously enough,
virgefb seems to be only for Zorro (Amiga) boards. Perhaps it
was a popular expansion?
Anyway, it works fine as an SVGA board on PCs. If you'd like it,
you can have it for shipping from Philadelphia.
- Dave
10:59 p.m.
On Thu, 16 Aug 2012, David Riley wrote:
If that's all you want, I have an old S3 Virge PCI
card sitting
around here somewhere. I don't know how similar that is to the
Trio, but my guess is it's not super-close; there are framebuffer
drivers for both in the kernel tree, though curiously enough,
virgefb seems to be only for Zorro (Amiga) boards. Perhaps it
was a popular expansion?
Anyway, it works fine as an SVGA board on PCs. If you'd like it,
you can have it for shipping from Philadelphia.
I appreciate the offer, but the Virge might be a little too new to be
supported by Digital Unix. If I can't find an original board, the best
chance for compatibility maybe a Trio64 based board. Because the Virge
chips were based on parts of the Trio, there is a chance it could work
though.
I did a second check through my own box of random PCI boards and the only
video boards that I found were an old Trident based board (junk, but I
kept it around for testing random motherboards) and a couple of old
Diamond Stealth 2500 (Aliance chipset). I guess I've managed to use or
give away pretty much all the old PCI VGA boards I used to have ;)
17 Aug
17 Aug
10:09 a.m.
On 2012-08-16 13:35, Mark Wickens wrote:
I have a PowerStorm 3D3O (ZLXp-E1) which will do 8
plane at 1280x1024.
I've not tried it in my AlphaServer 300 4/266 because I installed a
ZLXp-E2. I would recommend this card if you can find one - I got one
new from the USA for about $40.
When was that? You remember by any chance where you got it from?
I'm looking for one of the bigger PowerStorms for a while already ...
19 Aug
19 Aug
5:48 a.m.
On Thu, 16 Aug 2012, Tothwolf wrote:
I have an AlphaStation 200 4/233 which was given to me
without a video board
or floppy drive. I stuck an old Teac FD-235HF in the floppy bay to fill the
hole (no data cable), but have no idea what I really need for a video board.
Based on the datasheet I found online, these appear to
have been (some?) of
the video boards offered as options for this system:
ZLXp-E1 8-plane PBXGA-AA PBXGA-AN [NT]
ZLXp-E2 24-plane PBXGA-BA PBXGA-BN [NT]
ZLXp-E3 24-plane PBXGA-CA PBXGA-CN [NT]
ZLXp-L1 24-plane PBXGC-AA
ZLXp-L2 24-plane PBXGC-BA
Does anyone have an extra video board laying around that they would be
willing to part with for postage costs? This machine has been sitting unused
for far too long and I'd really like to put it to work.
I've managed to locate a board which I think will do the trick.
I had previously found a seller on eBay who had photos that showed the
solder side of the video card in the same model computer:
[USD $900 for an AS200?!]
http://www.ebay.com/itm/DIGITAL-Personal-WorkStation-AS200-233-PB42B-DB-Alp…
Using his photo, I was able to match the board up with the extensive
photos this seller has in his listing:
[USD $39 + $18 shipping for a single PCI video card? I don't think so...]
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Number-Nine-PC00EPS0-2-PCI-Video-Card-S3-Trio64-86C…
...which I was then able to match up with this board, the one I bought:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Number-9-NNVT-PCI-Video-Card-for-DEC-Alphaserver-AS…
It only has 1MB of video memory, although if I can locate a pair of
compatible SOJ memory chips, it can be upgraded to 2MB.
While I don't know the model of the video board, it was made by Number
Nine and has a board id of PC00EPS0-2. The chipset used is the S3 Trio64
86C764.
I was also able to locate photos of the board here:
http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/component/content/article/776-s3-trio64-
The same site also has photos of a number of other DEC video boards.
DEC PBXGA-AN
http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/palcals-collection/58-other-cards/849-p…
DEC PowerStorm 3D30 [PBXGC?]
DEC PowerStorm 4D20 [PBXGD?]
http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/palcals-collection/112-ibm/868-ibm-26h3…
DEC PCXAG-AL
Number Nine GXE64
http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/component/content/article/656-s3-vision…
I suppose once this Alpha is functional it will be time to do something
with the Sparc LX that had been sitting up on the shelf beside the
Alpha...
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participants (5)
-
emu＠e-bbes.com -
fraveydank＠gmail.com -
mark＠wickensonline.co.uk -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
tothwolf＠concentric.net