Sometimes, life's really funny. A long time ago, GL1zdA gave me a head start on looking for a DEC Alpha.
Back then, there were tons of good offers but I didn't have the money. Now, I've got a reasonable budget, but offers are few and expensive.

Given the situation, you can imagine my shock when I discovered that a former seller, whose main page stated clearly that they sold-out all of their electronics to another company, told me through e-mail that they still have a couple of 164LX boards left.

Everything seems to be nice and dandy but there's a catch : I'll probably have to buy the RAM modules separately.
AFAIK, I'll be needing PC100, ECC-compatible RAM. Judging by the looks of it, anything with a capacity > 128MB costs its own weight in gold !

The guy from Hummingbirdsales I contacted told me he might be able to find some RAM laying around, but he can't guarantee it.
I'm wondering... the DEC Alpha version of Windows 2000's requirements; are they the same as the IA-32 version in therms of RAM ?

Last but not least, is there a HCL list for the Alpha port of Win2k (was there ever a HCL list compiled for that RC build) ? I've got an ISA-compatible ESS soundcard which should be about the only compatible hardware I've got.

Oh and one last thing: I know I could just search through NT4's docs but I was hoping that during Win2K's development they also increased the number of compatible hardware, what with WDM and all.

Usually the RISC versions need more memory, because the executable size is larger. Rule of thumb: an Alpha application is about twice the size of a comparable x86 application. Keep this in mind when equipping your computer with memory.

You can always start with less memory and add some more later, when you find a bargain (I've bought a while ago 256 MB PC-100 ECC modules at about $5 each). A 128 MB DIMM should be OK for a start.

I don't think there was a HCL for the RC build, you should limit yourself to the driver's on the Windows 2000 CD - the two important things are SCSI (I had problems with installing Windows NT 4.0 on a HDD connected to the onboard IDE controller) and graphics. If you want an expanded Alpha (with 3D acceleration) NT 4.0 is a better choice.

Thanks for the information. Apparently its going to be shipped with two 64MB modules (which should be OK, I think I've seen some 64MB modules on sale locally at a convenient price).
Just for the sake of it, I'm thinking on doing some oldschool 3D modelling on this machine. Are there any Nvidia Quadro or ATi FireGL cards that had Alpha drivers ? Or maybe I should be thinking about Matrox / 3dfx as vendors. Oh, and modelling software too (wonder if Autodesk ported any of its software to Alpha, or maybe I could try porting Blender... unless I die trying xD)

Actually found an interesting discussion here.
I'll keep digging tomorrow.

viewtopic.php?p=134762#p134762
There are no nVidia/ATI drivers for the AlphaNT that I know about. The Permedia 2 is a safe and cheap choice (just make sure you don't buy the AGP version), there are drivers for Mitsubishi 3DPro/2mp based cards (you could probably use drivers from any manufacturer just like with the Permedia - my ELSA Synergy works with ELSA drivers, reference 3Dlabs drivers, DEC PowerStorm drivers and would probably work with Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro drivers. If you want to buy one, make sure it has the CDRAM module installed - my AccelEclipse will hang AlphaNT during startup, probably due to the missing module). The fastest card for the AlphaNT was the PowerStorm 350, which is based on Evans & Sutherland REALimage 2100 - as above - probably the Alpha REALimage 2100 (Mitsubishi IMPAC-GE) driver will work with any card based on this chipset, provided you find one - the only one other than the PowerStorm I know about is the E&S AccelGalaxy and it is available only as AGP version, so it won't work. There are some mentions of the Diamond FireGL 5000, which would use REALimage 2100, but I've never seen it anywhere, Diamond also doesn't have driver's for it, so I assume it was never manufactured. Here are good references for which cards use which chips:

* 3Dlabs
* Mitsubishi 3DPro/2MP

Some Intergraph cards should also work with PowerStorm drivers:

PowerStorm 4D40T (PBXGI-AA) = Intergraph RealiZm I Z13 (Cateyes Bobcat) [dual-PCI, 16 MB frame buffer, optional 4/16/32 texture memory]
PowerStorm 4D50T (PBXGI-AB) = Intergraph RealiZm I Z13 (Cateyes Puma) [dual-PCI, 16 MB frame buffer, optional 4/16/32 texture memory]
PowerStorm 4D60T (PBXGI-AC) = Intergraph RealiZm I V25 (Cateyes Leopard) [dual-PCI, 32 MB frame buffer, optional 4/16/32 texture memory]
PowerStorm 4D51T (PBXGI-AD) = Intergraph Intense3D PRO 2200 16 MB (MSMT440) [4 MB standard, 16 MB optional texture memory]

As for 3D software. There is a version of Microstation and SoftImage for the AlphaNT, but I don't have them. There are more 3D programs, but I have not researched this matter.

Until I finish the deal and wait for the board to be shipped, I'm wondering if there's an emulator out there for Alpha with AlphaBIOS support. The dev mailing list on QEMU seems to mention the DEC Alpha, but thats about it. There's also GXemul but only Tru64 and linux are supported.

Anyway, I'll have to start searching for graphics cards. Thanks for the info on them !
Also, you're right, SoftImage ran on DEC Alpha before it was bought by Autodesk. I don't think we have that one on the FTP though.

Unfortunately I don't know about any emulator working with AlphaBIOS.

More AlphaNT 3D software:
Pro/ENGINEER
LightWave 3D

If you want more software: alphant.com went down recently, but you can still access it through archive.org:
http://web.archive.org/web/200911080639 ... ware.shtml

Apparently there were over 2500 applications available for the AlphaNT:
http://web.archive.org/web/199805051446 ... ameset.htm
but for some reason there no single webpage from digital.com is archived on archive.org. I guess it was inconvenient for HP.