[rescue] Appropriate OS for Alpha?

[Chris Petersen]

On Wed, Jul 24, 2002 at 04:18:19PM +0200, Stephen D. B. Wolthusen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 24-Jul-2002 Chris Petersen wrote:
> > Up until OpenVMS 7.? (I think something like 7.2-3?), the *only*
> > framebuffers supported in workstations were:
> > 
> > ZLXp-E1 (TGA)
> > PowerStorm 3D30
> > PowerStorm 4D20
> 
> It's not that bad; support for the Gloria Synergy (rechristened Powerstorm
> 4D10T) was added IIRC in parallel with the release of the XP1000 (99ish), which
> would be 7.2-1 (might have been 7.2). That's an entirely serviceable 24 bit card
> (8MB), have it in the XP1000 on my desk running VMS, and since I usually run
> only 1280x1024 on 21" displays, that's OK.   
> 

True.  Interestingly enough, however, the PowerStorm 4D10T wasn't really
supported under Tru64 at that point, IIRC.  In fact, I think the OpenVMS
team has done a good job since then, since they have supported a good
variety of fairly easy to get 3D framebuffers that *aren't* DEC/Compaq OEM
like the PowerStorms were.  Interesting to finally see a commercial OS
vendor spend some time on that approach.

The problem at the time was the fact that the 433/500/600AUs were sold as
"universal" workstations capable of running NT/Digital UNIX/OpenVMS/Linux,
but in reality fell down due to hardware support issues.  It's hard to tell
someone that already has the very excellent PowerStorm 4D51T card that
they've got to drop that and switch to an Elsa Gloria Synergy (a lower-end
card) in order to run VMS on their box.  'Twas a dumb move, to be sure, on
DECPaq's part...

Chris

-- 
Chris Petersen			  E-mail: havoc at apk.net
Systems Engineer, ExperTeam Services, EDS PLM Solutions