One idea was to incorporate a PCI chipset onto the Alpha itself, resulting in a lower partcount, and fewer pins on the microprocessor package. This idea ultimately led to the development of the "LCA" (for Low Cost Alpha) chip series, of which the 21066, 21066a, and 21068 are members. The 21068 100MHz component is seldom encountered, and seems to be some sort of low power varient. The first production chip was the 21066, which was made available in a 166MHz version. In fact, the 166MHz 21066 was considerably slower than the 166MHz 21064 "full Alpha", owing to a slower memory bus. And, in fact, the LCA turned out to be more expensive to produce than expected, as increased die size for the PCI functionality decreased chip yields. The final chip in the series, the 233 MHz 21066a, was a beneficiary of a feature size shrink, and is pin compatible with the earlier chips. Given the fact that LCA really wasn't Low Cost Alpha, Digital Semiconductor made the decision to terminate the design in late 1995.
In 1993, Digital and Microsoft created an alliance under which the Windows NT operating system was ported to the Alpha microprocessor. Today (1997) the Alpha is still the largest non-x86 Windows NT platform. In order to increase market share, DEC created a small, easy to use Alpha workstation, based on the LCA, which would sell for less than half of the current workstation price. The small workstation was designed and build by the Terminals Group, the same group that had designed and built the VT100. The Multia Multiclient Workstation (usually just Multia for short) was an award winning design, compact and fast. Unfortunately, it never really caught on, and DEC was left with several warehouses full of them. In a final attempt to sell these, DEC assisted in a port of the Linux operating system, and then sold many of the warehoused Multia workstations as "Universal Desktop Boxes" (UDBs). But, in the end, DEC was still left with too much warehoused product, and closed the line, along with termination of the LCA project. Most of the warehoused product was sold at a considerable discount off of the list price (90%), but some was destroyed for tax purposes.
The other product based on the LCA was the axppci33 OEM motherboard, produced by Digital Semiconductor. As with the other microprocessors it produces, Digital Semi creates a "reference design" for use by OEMs. The axppci33 motherboard is a standard "baby AT" sized board, with three PCI slots and 5 ISA slots, and the usual PC peripherals. It fits very nicely into a standard AT clone case. As was the case with the Multia, the axppci33 had no future beyond the end of LCA, and so the warehoused product was recently released, again at fire-sale prices.
Although it's doubtful that DEC made any money with the LCA systems, they are quickly becoming popular systems in the freeware Unix community. They're not particularly fast (the 21066a systems are about as fast as a Pentium 166), but they're Alpha systems, which means that you could buy a much, much faster server and yet still run the same software, thus protecting your investment in time and code. LCA systems generally run about $500 in the secondary market, making them an attractive alternative. Finally, there's something special about owning an Alpha system -- Alpha has a certain performance cachet -- and it's a way of owning a system that's "different" in an increasingly x86 world.
The Multia
First off, if you want to know the basics about the Multia, you should begin
by reading the material at the following sites:
Along the way, I learned an awful lot about the Multia hardware, material that was in the DEC notesfiles, as well as some bits from the folks who still repair them.
DEC axppci33 Systems
Other Hints