Unix True 64 - PWS 500au, Tru64 5.1B and Powerstorm 4D50T

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PWS 500au, Tru64 5.1B and Powerstorm 4D50T - is it possible?

Edi Weitz

2004-03-18, 9:48 am

Hi!

I've just bought a used PWS 500au and installed the non-commercial
"enthusiast" version of Tru64 5.1B on it.

The machine has a Powerstorm 4D50T graphics adapter which doesn't seem
to be supported out-of-the-box - setld -i doesn't show anything
starting with "4D50". On my LCD screen (an old Sony SDM-N50) I only
get 640x480 with very few colors.

I looked around and found drivers for "5.1A or later" at

<http://www.support.compaq.com/open3d/sw4d50t.htm>

but can't install them. Essentially, my problems are described here:

<http://groups.google.com/groups?sel...ting.google.com>

Unfortunately, nobody has answered this posting from last August. Does
that mean there's no chance to get this hardware to work properly with
5.1B? I'm prepared to work via X from another machine but that would
be - for me - a sub-optimal solution.

Thanks,
Edi.

Disclaimer: I'm completely new to Tru64 or Digital Unix although I
have some years of experience with FreeBSD and Linux. I only want to
use the Alpha to run Open Genera[1]. Another option might be to
re-install Digital Unix 4.0F but I think in this case it will be hard
(if not impossible) to have things like SSH and DHCP.

[1] <http://www2.thecia.net/users/ptw/VLM.html>

Edi Weitz

2004-03-19, 8:35 pm

For the record: The procedure sketched in

<http://groups.google.com/groups?sel...ting.google.com>

did indeed work, i.e. I grepped all files in the 'kit' directory and
its subdirectories for OSFBASE530 and replaced each occurrence with
OSFBASE540. Afterwards I could install the driver.

I then added

-screen 1024x768 -vsync 72 -vclass TrueColor

to the corresponding line in /var/X11/Xserver.conf (this is for an old
Sony SDM-N50 LCD screen) and it works now.

Edi.