Ok... That's embarrassing, but appreciate the correction 😀

As far as I've remember, I've tried to google the datasheets and possibly found something that listed these as memory ic's... In any case, BIOS reports 384k of Shadow RAM and these being right near the coast module and the CPU, it all somehow added up in my head.

Another update on the Venturis,

Recently I have picked up a nice little CRT. It is a Smile branded 14" Color VGA monitor, which happened to be quite in a good condition. Still plenty of contrast and brightness, all the controls work, etc. Only thing needed to be done is just to clean off some dust from it. This is quite nice for DOS, I think. It is not too big or heavy, fits Pentium 1 build nicely.

And indeed it paired with Digital Venturis very nicely. Had a blast playing Heroes 1 last night!

The machine, if it was sold with a monitor, probably would have been sold with a DEC PCXBV-xx CRT Display, such as this PCXBV-FZ 17": https://www.ebay.com/itm/134594856909 or this PCXBV-YA 15": https://sites.unoeste.br/museu/monitor-digital-pcxbv-ya/

They're pretty nice looking CRTs. I've got a bunch of 15" ones in storage though IIRC they've developed an issue where occasionally there is a crack and the size of the picture on the screen shrinks briefly - perhaps just caused by dust but I've not gotten around to cleaning one to see if it fixes the problem yet.

davidrg wrote on 2023-10-25, 20:33:

The machine, if it was sold with a monitor, probably would have been sold with a DEC PCXBV-xx CRT Display, such as this PCXBV-FZ 17": https://www.ebay.com/itm/134594856909 or this PCXBV-YA 15": https://sites.unoeste.br/museu/monitor-digital-pcxbv-ya/

They're pretty nice looking CRTs. I've got a bunch of 15" ones in storage though IIRC they've developed an issue where occasionally there is a crack and the size of the picture on the screen shrinks briefly - perhaps just caused by dust but I've not gotten around to cleaning one to see if it fixes the problem yet.

I picked up a PCXBV-EZ in very nice condition, and I'm wating for the arrival of DEC PC 3000 , believe it's the european counterpart of the FX series, will post pictures when everything is set up.

Those CRTs certainly look the part for the 1997/1998 era Digital PCs. The -EY fetched out of storage a few days ago is doing this thing to an unusable extent sadly.

For some bizarre reason in October 1997 Digital re-branded their entire PC line to the more generic and un-googleable/altavistaable "Digital PC" and "Digital Server" names. The Venturis series became the "Digital PC 3000" series while the Celebris series became "Digital PC 5000" series. As part of this, the existing Venturis FX-2 was renamed the Digital PC 3100 and the new Digital PC 3010 was released. The Digital PC 3500, a Pentium II model, came later in February 1998 and was probably the last new PC model introduced by DEC.

I recently fetched a PC 3010 and 3500 out of storage (along with a Celebris GL 6200 PPro and a dead? FX-2) and had to do a bit of research to figure out what exactly they were, really want to get my hands on more now - especially not yellowed and/or short-tower examples!

Edit: The Digital PC 3010 still had its original OEM install of Windows 95. Attached are the customised win95 splash screen and oemlogo.bmp, can't see an oemlogo.ini

davidrg wrote on 2024-01-13, 21:27:

For some bizarre reason in October 1997 Digital re-branded their entire PC line to the more generic and un-googleable/altavistaable "Digital PC" and "Digital Server" names. The Venturis series became the "Digital PC 3000" series while the Celebris series became "Digital PC 5000" series. As part of this, the existing Venturis FX-2 was renamed the Digital PC 3100 and the new Digital PC 3010 was released. The Digital PC 3500, a Pentium II model, came later in February 1998 and was probably the last new PC model introduced by DEC.

Never been fan of DEC x86 line, except perhaps the Prioris with the Mylex dac960 card I never was able to get one for me.
I will need help soon with a pair of computers but that'll require a new thread definitely.