By now, there are a number of vendors that sell Alpha based motherboards. First, there is Digital Semiconductor which provides reference designs and also sells so called "evaluation boards". The most popular evaluation boards are currently the AlphaPC64 (Cabriolet) and the EB164. More info can be found at Digital Semiconductor's web site.
Digital OEM also offers Alpha boards: the low-end Noname (AXPpci33) and the higher-end Alpha PCI boards. The Noname board was the first Alpha PCI motherboard sold by DEC and the section below describes it in detail. The Alpha PCI boards are much newer and also a lot more performant. Volume shipment started April 96. The following Alpha PCI boards are available:
Model: Description: Price:
EBP30-AN Alpha PCI 21064-275MHz, 2 MB cache $2,853
EBP40-AN Alpha PCI 21164-266MHz, 2 MB cache $4,999
EBP41-AN Alpha PCI 21164-300MHz, 2 MB cache $5,272
More info on these boards can be found in the "Digital OEM Embedded and Realtime Pocket Catalog" (DEC order number EC-15525-56) but to give a rough idea: the first one is similar to the Cabriolet board whereas the remaining two are based on the EB164 design. Linux should run on all of these.
There are a number of third parties that offer motherboards as well. They are often (but not always) based on the evaluation boards by Digital Semiconductor, which means that they are typically Linux compatible if Linux runs on the corresponding evaluation board. See the list of vendors below for more information.
Kenetics Technology implemented an interesting twist in motherboard design. Its Platform 2000 (P2K) consists of a generic motherboard that is supplemented by an engine daughter-card that hosts the CPU. Various engine cards are available and in particular there is one with a 21066 Alpha CPU on it. The motherboard is called Zeus and the Alpha engine card is called Thor. As far as we know, this combination provides the lowest-cost Alpha motherboard solution. Approximate prices as of February 1996 are:
Zeus and Thor make for a motherboard that is very similar to the Noname. There are a few differences that requires running separate Linux kernels but most aspects are identical. The differences between P2K and the Noname board are listed below:
In general, its likely that buying a complete system will actually be cheaper than putting together a system yourself. This is especially true for many of the third-party systems and for Digital's XL machines. If you add the costs of all the components to the price of the motherboard, you'll quickly find that it's difficult to beat those prices. The good news of this is of course that it will also save you the trouble of having to find appropriate parts.
A brief introduction and overview of various Alpha systems and processors on the market can be found in Brief Alpha System Overview .
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