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DECpc XL 590

munocat

Member
Joined
Jun 27, 2019
Messages
29
Location
Vancouver WA
I know this is not as hardcore as any PDP, does anybody have any experience with this model, DECpc XL 590. It does not post and does 2 1/2 beeps. It is a Pentium P90 MP, just got the 1 CPU in there. Memory is fine, tested in my 486 DEC pc. Hoping to get this Pc running and put UnixWare or NetBSD on it. It has scsi-2, and ide off the motherboard
 
The DECpc's are for the most part your standard Wintel of the time, so you maybe able to diagnose the beeps as anyone would with a basic consumer BIOS/motherboard.

Did find this and looks fairly close to what you may have: http://manx-docs.org/collections/mds-199909/cd2/pc/a0823svb.pdf

Thank you. I am guess it is the motherboard. I noticed bank 0, a few messed up pins and 1 missing. Found a replacement on eBay. I have found this motherboard quite not so standard. Seeing that the cpu is on a daughter card it can support few options. The lower end P90-P120, the P166, and with the bios chip changed, plus a jumper, it can have an alpha processor. The board has a Dallas real time clock and on board scsi-2.

I am impressed with the dec quality. EEC ram, parts seem of higher standards than most pc of the era I have come across. I recently got a DECpc LVx dx33. I have real digital memory in it now with its dec graphics card. I upgrade the secondary cache, made quite an improvement. I am running Slackware 1.2.13.
 
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