From: Wilkinson,Alex (Alex.Wilkinson@dsto.defence.gov.au)
Date: Wed May 08 2002 - 21:13:07 EDT
Thanks to:
"Dr. Thomas.Blinn@Compaq.com" <tpb@doctor.zk3.dec.com>
Octave Orgeron <unixconsole@yahoo.com>
"Thursday" AKA dr. john <thursday@allidaho.com>
Ralf Borowski <rborowski@tembec.ca>
From: Selden E Ball Jr <SEB@lns62.lns.cornell.edu>
alan@nabeth.cxo.cpqcorp.net
Tarasyuk Nik <NTarasyuk@snowyhydro.com.au>
William H. Magill <magill@isc.upenn.edu>
Original Question
-----------------
I have an Alpha pws 500au. I am wondering if it would be possible to put a
Matrox Millennium G450 PCI video card in it.
Does anyone know if *most* PCI cards would work on an Alpha workstation with a PCI bus ?
Is the PCI bus in Alpha's an Industry Standard ?
Answers
-------
In summary: "The G450 is *not* one of the few cards supported by Tru64"
1. The *hardware* is almost certainly *physically* compatible.
2. The *only* kind of PCI bus that exists is "industry standard", and Alpha systems
are designed and implemented to the standard.
3. That doesn't mean the card will be usable. If there is no driver for
it in Tru64 UNIX or whatever other OS you are running, then it likely
will just operate as basic VGA (640x480 resolution, 64 colors). You
won't be happy. The card you name does NOT sound like one supported
by Tru64 UNIX, but you can plug it in and see if it works. Good luck.
4. Most PCI cards will work in an Alpha. When it comes to
video cards, you have to place the card in the correct
slot, which can be fun. The reason for this is that
the PCI implementation is designed so that PCI bus 0
has the graphics card to allow the fasted access to
it. The only problem you'll run into is that your
video card would only be supported under linux or BSD,
not Tru64.. unless you plan on writting a driver:) The
alpha's do follow the actual PCI specs, which makes
the PCI buses on Alphas picky about where cards are
placed. On PC's, the PCI bus tends to be very
forgiving because most pci card manufacturers don't
closely follow the PCI specs.. a good example of this
is Creative Labs. The alpha most closely follows the
PCI specs, which of course is a surprise to most
people. The way cards are seen and initialized with
the SRM is very intellegent compaired to a PC bios.
5. The firmware in the DPWS models places restrictions on
which slots may be used for what.
Specifically, the 64 bit slots may be used only for graphics cards,
Graphics cards may not be plugged into the 32 bit slots..
Conclusion
----------
I will put FreeBSD on my Alpha pws 500au and it should work.
Refs
---- http://www.compaq.com/info/spd/ http://moon.hanya-n.org/comp/alpha/hct/graphics.html http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/products/graphics/drivers.html Thanks to all those that replyed. I can't believe how helpfull the people on this list are. Thanks - Alex
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