An AlphaStation's SROM

I'm thankful for folks who write articles like this. Even if the goal wasn't reached (getting the AlphaStation to boot), having something to show for a negative result still helps if someone else needs to go down a similar road - or, for that matter, needs to know not to go down a particular road.

I likewise wrote a COVID-boredom-induced blog post about my many missteps, and eventual failure, getting AIX to run on an old PC. My "learnings" there were that the installation media (floppies) are _written to_ by the installer, making a reset to a known state rather difficult, and also that support for IDE disks was only made available in a patch.

What I really wish about this article is that the author would say if they tried any other video card in this system.

A DEC Alpha should load SROM and then jump straight into SRM (firmware - BIOS essentially) or ARC (Windows NT firmware).

Any VGA capable PCI video card should work in an Alpha well enough to get into SRM, even if the RAM and/or SCSI controller are dead.

He said the Matrox video card did not work in other systems. But how about other video cards in his Alpha?

This is an amazing write-up but I want to know if he really needs to get into mini-console or if he just needs a working video card to get into SRM.

Perhaps there is something of use in here… (it describes working with the mini-console for example) https://manx-docs.org/collections/antonio/dec/MDS-2000-01/cd...

Sounds like a case of "it's always the PSU" in figurative sense... e.g. half-blown fuses, dried up caps, good +12V but weakened 3V3 lines, oxidation on sockets, things of that nature.

Or it could be platform quirks, or more interesting failures like crystal oscillator degrading, but I'd leave those to later.

Ouch, that name (it literally means "vulva" in Polish).

Not to say SRAM is any better (it means "I shit").