SUMMARY: Alpha pws 500au AND Matrox Millennium G450 ?

From: Wilkinson,Alex <Alex.Wilkinson_at_dsto.defence.gov.au>
Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 10:43:07 +0930 (CST)

Thanks to:

"Dr. Thomas.Blinn_at_Compaq.com" <tpb_at_doctor.zk3.dec.com>
Octave Orgeron <unixconsole_at_yahoo.com>
"Thursday" AKA dr. john <thursday_at_allidaho.com>
Ralf Borowski <rborowski_at_tembec.ca>
From: Selden E Ball Jr <SEB_at_lns62.lns.cornell.edu>
alan_at_nabeth.cxo.cpqcorp.net
Tarasyuk Nik <NTarasyuk_at_snowyhydro.com.au>
William H. Magill <magill_at_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
Received on Thu May 09 2002 - 01:28:59 NZST

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