DEC PC 433 Workstation 486 PCW10-A2

[Magnedyne]

Now this is a lot newer compared to what I collect usually but I couldn’t resist pulling it out of recycling. There is not mutch information about this model on the internet. It’s not in the best of conditions but I’m not complaining.

I just took a look inside the bottom case, it seems to be a sort of expansion for external drives. A harddrive made by Digital and a tape drive can be found inside.

This is the workstation itself, it’s quite heavy and very densely packed


The graphics card is mounted horizontally and plugs into the mainboard via (probably) Isa.


Oh no! This one seems to be affected by the leaking cmos battery trend as well. The board itself, whilst being damaged,is not a total loss and might be saveable.



Interesting choice for the accelerator socket


Overall they cleaned up surprisingly well and I was even able to fix the front panel damage, for the most part at least.


I had the board sitting in isopropyl alcohol overnight, however unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to boot, just a short green blink of the lights at the front and then the led on the board just glows orange.

Furthermore it shall be noted that I have checked the power supply and all the voltages are in an acceptable range.

The case seems to have taken the most damage, but overall it’s really not that bad, I’ve seen far worse.

 

[Wildfire]

Nice score !

Never seen this version.
The casing is imo a modified VAXstation 4000/VLC style one...

The corrosion is bad on the mainboard, i wish you luck in getting this system up and running again.
Would be interesting to see, there is a turbocache module with Intel chipset addon also.

Can you post another pic with the connector side of the main unit ?

 

[smj]

ISTR a thread I posted in here covering this model, but all I could find was this one.

This was a very nice machine, when I needed a Windows box at work in the mid-90s and found one of these unused in a corner. Much more in the vein of a workstation of that era than a typical PC. I hope you're able to get it running again.

 

[Al Kossow]

people have been looking for the drivers for that 34020 video card for a while
imaging that disk would be a good thing.

also, there is probably some dongle-protected software on it

 

[Magnedyne]

people have been looking for the drivers for that 34020 video card for a while
imaging that disk would be a good thing.

also, there is probably some dongle-protected software on it

Oh wow, I’ll definitely image the drive, although I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s dead as the drive chassis itself was tossed into a ~3m deep container.

 

[Al Kossow]

this gave me the motivation to take a look at mine, and is why i'm so interested in the scsi dump
they appear to have token-ring network interfaces
the rest of the pictures http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/decpc/DECpc_433/sn_2B21100274

 

[Al Kossow]

just dumped the bios and added it to the bitsavers directory
mine appears to be dead as well

 

[Al Kossow]

I dug around and uploaded all of the mb asic datasheets to bitsavers, incl info on the 485turbocache module
The only part I couldn't find info on was the Corona 486-386 bus converter

 

[davidrg]

I wonder if perhaps I've just found the Windows 3.1 drivers for the graphics hardware in these machines. Sadly I don't have one to test with (just have the external drive enclosure), but perhaps someone who does could confirm.

I've got two different sets of "DECpc Windows 3.1" disks. The older of the two is no older than 10 June 1992 which is a little over two months prior to the 25 August '92 launch of the DECpc LP line. I think they came with a DECpc 333sxLP (there were graphics driver disks for that machine in the same DEC-branded boxes). The disks had been modified by DEC to include additional drivers, but interestingly not any drivers for any machine that was announced in August 1992 (such as the 333sxLP).

Instead they include only two additional graphics drivers, I assume for the two DECpc models that existed in June '92:

• Oak OTI-067 - for the DECpc 320sxLP and DECpc 325sxLP, machines launched (only in the Asia-Pacific region?) in April 1992 I think to test the market.
• TIGA - Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture. I assume not a high-end graphics add-on for a budget 25Mhz 386SX. Could this be for the Appian card in the DECpc 433 Workstation?

I don't know if linking directly to the full set of DECpc Windows 3.1 disks is allowed here, but the 7th disk appears to be only drivers from DEC so I figure linking to that is fine. It is: AK-PM60B-CA DECpc Microsoft(R) Windows(TM) Ver. 3.1 Disk 7

 

[Al Kossow]

I stumbled upon those recently. Those are the drivers!
Guess I forgot to post a msg here about it.
Also, a board set for the ethernet version showed up on eBay, and I was able to cobble something together that I could
get up as far as the bios setup screen.
hmmm.. looks like I haven't uploaded the bios for the ethernet version yet either

where did you find the picture of the floppy?

 

[davidrg]

I've got the original disks:

I suspect while they may have come with a DECpc 333sxLP, they were probably originally prepared for the DECpc 433 Workstation and those DECpc 320sxLP/325sxLP test machines seemingly sold in this part of the world from April 1992 (ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4) - otherwise if they were going to the trouble of adding drivers for obscure models no one has heard of, surely they'd add drivers for the models they're about to launch world-wide.

The later set of Windows 3.1 disks also have a bunch of extra drivers but mostly for DEC printers - the OTI driver is gone and all that's left of the TIGA driver is TIGA.DR_ and TIGAWIN.RL_. This disk set includes DOS 6.0 so was probably prepared for the models announced in August '92 as well as perhaps the DECpc LPv line (announced August '93). It also seems to drop the 7th disk along with a bunch of drivers for non-DEC things I guess to reduce costs:

 

[bear]

Found these in November. Told the one guy I knew had been looking; didn't realize other people had also been.

Compaq.com - Digital PC Products - Product Documentation x86-Based Systems

The Appian stuff is among the DECstation 433W files.

 

[davidrg]

that explains why people struggled to find it I guess - DEC labeled it wrong on their support site

 

[davidrg]

Found the documentation that went with those DECpc Windows 3.1 disks:
AK-PJBLA-TK DECpc MS-DOS Ver. 5.0 User's Guide and Reference
AA-PJBKC-TK DECpc MS-DOS Ver. 5.0 Enhancements
AA-PJBMC-TK DECpc Microsoft Windows Ver. 3.1 User's Guide
AE-PLNTB-TH SPD 37.30.00 Microsoft MS-DOS operating System, Version 5.0 with Microsoft Windows Graphical Environment, Version 3.1, April 1992
AV-PA41E-TK IMPORTANT Read This First

That last one actually lists "Enhancements to Digital's Windows 3.1":