Nice surprise: the CPU is the 500 MHz 21164 variant. I thought it was only 400 MHz - didn't even know they made an #AlphaStation 500 with 500 MHz. 
ps: also found the two shorted tantalums already. Hope this will be an easy fix.
The main logic board from a #DEC #AlphaStation 500. You know what to expect when even the external cache needs a fan. 
Sadly, this thing did throw sparks on me on first power-up. Guess I have to find those shorted tantalums...
Now I need to think about what the heck I'm using this thing for. 
Is there any interesting native Alpha software for NT that can showcase the performance and/or usefulness of it?
It's done, btw. Next ones all require some sort of repair.
Finally, the first #DEC #AlphaStation 255 is almost restored. Way more work than anticipated... Was quite shocked what a cheap mess the PSU in these things are. Stuff is held in place only by rivets and bend tabs; trying to remove the fan connector for cleaning ripped out the whole socket from the pcb due to very poor soldering... Anyway, the PSU is clean now and only needs reassembling. After that, I can reinstall the CD-ROM drive and the system is finished.
For your viewing pleasure: the mainboard from a #digital #AlphaStation 255 and the beautiful 300 MHz Alpha 21064 CPU.
Now cleaning the case parts. The front drive doors all look nice except for one, which has tons of scratches from someone in the past trying to remove a large label. But I assume at least one #AlphaStation will be a parts-only machine anyway. So getting four good-looking ones is sufficient.
Great, all four cards are working perfectly.
With the AlphaStations, I also got two spare 9.1 GB hard disks. Tested them and both booted right into Windows NT 4.0 SP5. Saves me quite a bit of work.
btw, speed is phenomenal. You are on the desktop in about 30 seconds after POST is complete. And it feels very snappy.
The PowerStorm 3D (2 MB) and PowerStorm 4D (16 MB) graphics cards taken from the various #digital #AlphaStation models that I've got - ready for individual testing.
btw, the silver IBM chip does 3D acceleration.
The Weird Way A DEC Alpha Boots - We’re used to there being an array of high-end microprocessor architectures, and i... - https://hackaday.com/2025/04/03/the-weird-way-a-dec-alpha-boots/ #retrocomputing #alphastation #workstation #decalpha
Took some trial and error but I managed to get current Gentoo with MATE running on my AlphaStation DS15. R100 seems to be making the graphics performance terrible. But it works.
Findings at my parents' house, part 3: Two AlphaStations.
They have SCSI disks of different sizes, and the last time I turned them on (2008), they were working perfectly.
They heated the room wonderfully, and the fans were strong enough to move the pictures on the wall 
I haven't turned them on again, but they should still have NetBSD installed.
This #DEC #Alphastation 255/233 that I just brought in from my garage looks almost brand new and seems to have quite a bit of RAM... let's hope it also works! (yet another project...)
