AlphaStation is the name given to a series of

computer workstations A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workstat ...

, produced from 1994 onwards by

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

, and later by

Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation was an American information technology, information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compati ...

and HP. As the name suggests, the AlphaStations were based on the

DEC Alpha Alpha (original name Alpha AXP) is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Alpha was designed to replace 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computers ( ...

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

. Supported

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s for AlphaStations comprise

Tru64 UNIX Tru64 UNIX is a discontinued 64-bit UNIX operating system for the DEC Alpha, Alpha instruction set architecture (ISA), currently owned by Hewlett-Packard (HP). Previously, Tru64 UNIX was a product of Compaq, and before that, Digital Equipment Corp ...

(formerly Digital UNIX),

OpenVMS OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS, is a multi-user, multiprocessing and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using Op ...

and

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

(with AlphaBIOS ARC firmware). Most of these workstations can also run various versions of

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

operating systems. Other Alpha workstations produced by DEC include the DEC 2000 AXP (DECpc AXP 150), the

DEC 3000 AXP DEC 3000 AXP was the name given to a series of computer workstations and servers, produced from 1992 to around 1995 by Digital Equipment Corporation. The DEC 3000 AXP series formed part of the first generation of computer systems based on the 6 ...

, the Digital Personal Workstation ''a''-series and ''au''-series (codename Miata), the

Multia Multia is a municipality of Finland. It is located in the Central Finland region. The municipality has a population of () and covers an area of of which , or 11.5%, is water. The population density is . The municipality is unilingually Finni ...

VX40/41/42 and the Alpha XL/Alpha XLT line (a member of the Alcor family, which had swappable

daughterboard In computing, an expansion card (also called an expansion board, adapter card, peripheral card or accessory card) is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot (also referred to as a bus sl ...

with

Pentium Pentium is a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel from 1993 to 2023. The Pentium (original), original Pentium was Intel's fifth generation processor, succeeding the i486; Pentium was Intel's flagship proce ...

processor, to transform to a DEC Celebris XL line).

Models

From the XP900 onwards, all AlphaStation models were simply workstation configurations of the corresponding AlphaServer model.

Avanti family

Alcor Family

Noritake and Rawhide Family

Tsunami Family

Titan and Marvel Family

A variant of the AlphaStation 1200 was also sold as the Digital Ultimate Workstation 533au².
Some systems had one of the microprocessors deactivated, which may be reactivated with a license upgrade.

References

External links

HP AlphaStation range

About NetBSD/alpha

Debian Alpha system types