[Info-vax] Monitor for Alphastation 500

[thedavegray at gmail.com]

On Friday, 6 September 2019 12:18:14 UTC+1, Hans Bachner  wrote:

> 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.

Thanks for the info.  I picked up a cheap one off eBay for £5 so will see how that goes. 

> 
> 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.

The more I think about the more this make sense. I have a Raspberry Pi sat doing nothing, I could put a lightweight Linux on this and just connect to the Alpha using a terminal program.   That way I just need (hopefully) to buy a usb/serial adaptor.  

Any recommendations for a terminal emulator or is PuTTy still the favoured option?   

I would like to get the Alpha on my home network as well but not too bothered about DECWindows.