🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct7.000743.47@otago.ac.nz>, psyxsgp@otago.ac.nz writes:
> 
> 	I heard a rumour that there was an EISA board available
> built around DECs Alpha chip. Is this so and if so where could I find
> further information?

It's not available yet. The latest "Digital News & Review" mentions two
such animals, Pelican and Triumph. According to them, Pelican will be
available first for around $7K and Triumph will follow later for around
$4K.

Can't imagine why anyone would _want_ to stick EISA off an Alpha, though;
seems like a can of worms that will never work right (how do you expect the
Alpha to execute the ROM BIOS on a VGA card, for example?).

Roger Ivie
ivie@cc.usu.edu

In article <1992Oct6.095841.59463@cc.usu.edu>, ivie@cc.usu.edu (CP/M lives!) writes:
> In article <1992Oct7.000743.47@otago.ac.nz>, psyxsgp@otago.ac.nz writes:
>> 
>> 	I heard a rumour that there was an EISA board available
>> built around DECs Alpha chip. Is this so and if so where could I find
>> further information?
> 
> It's not available yet. The latest "Digital News & Review" mentions two
> such animals, Pelican and Triumph. According to them, Pelican will be
> available first for around $7K and Triumph will follow later for around
> $4K.
> 
> Can't imagine why anyone would _want_ to stick EISA off an Alpha, though;
> seems like a can of worms that will never work right (how do you expect the
> Alpha to execute the ROM BIOS on a VGA card, for example?).

:)  Probably faster than a 486 would.  Pretty far from native Alpha
speed though.  (There _are_ things out there that can execute PC
applications on other architectures by emulating the PC hardware.
Naturally they can't run as fast as applications designed for the
"native" mode of the workstation, but often they can be run on
hardware -- such as Alpha -- that is itself fast enough that even
with the emulation overhead, their speed compares favorably with
that of a PC).  And in any event, most of the more "advanced"
environments for the PC (Unix, OS/2, MS-Windows, Desqview) don't
use much of the ROM-BIOS -- most ROM-BIOS's can't be run in protected
mode, and essentially none of them can be used in the 386's 32-bit
mode.  So even on the PC the ROM-BIOS is of somewhat limited utility.

The only reason I can think of to want to run EISA off an Alpha
would be for compatibility, sort of the same reason that there are
Unibus adapters available for many (all?) of the BI-bus VAXen.  If
you have oddball board(s) that that don't (yet) have any equivalent
as a "native" board, it may be an attractive interim option.

I'd agree that it's likely to be a can of worms though;  probably
only interesting to a fairly narrow market segment.  SCSI looks
to me like a better option for most purposes for most Alpha customers
interested in backwards compatibility.

Bruce C. Wright

In article <1992Oct8.132005.5768@ais.com>, bruce@ais.com (Bruce C. Wright) writes:
> The only reason I can think of to want to run EISA off an Alpha
> would be for compatibility, sort of the same reason that there are
> Unibus adapters available for many (all?) of the BI-bus VAXen.  If
> you have oddball board(s) that that don't (yet) have any equivalent
> as a "native" board, it may be an attractive interim option.

There really aren't that many BI-bus VAXen. The 6000s, for example, only use
BI for I/O. And between the XMI-BI adapter and the BI-UNIBUS adapter, the
performance out there in UNIBUS-land gets pretty poor. UNIBUS isn't even
supported on the high-end machines. What little news I've been getting 
about the Alpha machines looks discouraging for CSR accesses in general,
let alone talking to EISA registers.

Roger Ivie
ivie@cc.usu.edu