[Info-vax] Monitor for Alphastation 500

[Hans Bachner]

thedavegray at gmail.com schrieb am 06.09.2019 um 01:38:
> Hi,
> I just got hold of a brand new Alphastation 500. The shipping
> docs say it's sale date is 2/2/98 but it's factory wrapped/boxed
> and with factory labels over the kettle socket.
>
> I haven't powered it up yet because I want to be sure things like
> clock battery are ok and also I don't have a monitor adapter.
>
> So a couple of questions. This has a 25 pin monitor port on the
> back (not seen one of these before) so I wondered if it's possible
> to hook this up with a modern VGA via an adaptor?  I have a Dell
> SVGA which has a range low enough to handle Atari ST colour via
>
> CGA.
>
> [snip]

The AlphaStation 500 does not have onboard graphics, you need a PCI card 
for graphics. As has been mentioned (some) ELSA Gloria Synergy cards 
will work on this type of system.

Regarding the serial ports - the upper one is the console port, so if 
you hook up your VT monitor you should see the power-up diagnostics and 
the SRM prompt (">>>"). To start with the system, I'd hook up a notebook 
(or PC) to the serial port and use e.g. PuTTY to interact with the 
AlphaStation, mainly because of the capability of scrolling back to 
output which has disappeared at the top of the screen.

Good luck,
Hans.