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NT Alpha drivers for PowerStorm 300 card

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First post, by stamasd

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Does anyone here have alternate drivers for DEC/Compaq PowerStorm 300 PCI cards under Windows NT 4.0 Alpha? I tried the ones from vogonsdrivers and they don't work for me. I can install them and the installation succeeds without errors, but after I reboot I have no image at all. Blank monitor, no video signal.

At first I thought maybe the card doesn't function properly, but since then I have tried another PowerStorm 300 card and I have the same result.

The host system is a DEC AlphaPC 164 with a 500MHz 21164 Alpha, 512MB RAM, Win NT 4.0 SP6 Alpha. Fresh install, no other additions. I have tried all 4 PCI slots but it doesn't change the result. The card works in ARC (the firmware, analog to BIOS) and in NT without drivers installed; no image after NT boots with drivers installed.

I have tried another set of drivers I found on the net that were labeled as being for Compaq PowerStorm 300 NT Alpha, but those cannot be installed; they're I think not for Alpha but for x86. It's found in this file here: ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq//sp10001-10500/sp10415.exe (readme at ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq//sp10001-10500/sp10415.txt)

I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O

Reply 2 of 6, by stamasd

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mrau wrote:

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp10001-10500/sp10362.exe - english, i assume

Thanks, will try when I get home. I hope those are for Alpha not x86.

I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O

Reply 3 of 6, by stamasd

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I downloaded the package above and extracted the files. At first sight they look suspiciously similar to the ones from the x86 package linked in my first post above but a slightly earlier revision (v.2.05 from 9/1999 vs v.2.06 from 2/2000).

I tried to install them anyway, and to my surprise NT didn't complain and installed them.

However after reboot it refuses to load the video driver and halts during the boot sequence complaining about it.

That was a good try, but I'm still looking.

I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O

Reply 4 of 6, by PC Hoarder Patrol

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I can only see one Alpha NT SoftPaq that applies to a PowerStorm card and that's for one of the older ones, the rest are for x86 NT. If you check top left-hand link of the Alpha Graphics (PowerStorm) support page

https://web.archive.org/web/20020415172036/ht … paq.com/open3d/

it looks as if the file you've already got from vogonsdrivers is the only one released between Dec 1999 and Apr 2002, after which they seemed to have quietly dropped Alpha NT from its support page.

Reply 5 of 6, by stamasd

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Yeah it's sad. I was going to download and test that package anyway to see of by any chance the files uploaded to vogonsdrivers are corrupted. But sadly archive.org does not have that file archived
https://web.archive.org/web/20011031022016/ht … 300_350_V4a.zip gives an error. 🙁

I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O

Reply 6 of 6, by stamasd

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Hm. Found an archive of ftp.alphant.com and there is that package powerstorm300_350_v4a.zip in "incoming" marked as "resend" i.e. there was a problem with it and it wasn't accepted... It has the same content as the package on vogonsdrivers. I wonder what the problem was with the package, but I guess we'll never know.

I'm hoping that there is a clean copy of the package anywhere on the net, as this one is clearly not working for me.

I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O

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