Does anyone remember the Digital (DEC) Starion Desktop line? \ VOGONS

Does anyone remember the Digital (DEC) Starion Desktop line?

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First post, by marinelayer

Posted on 2023-09-05, 22:12

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I've been looking for my first Windows 95 computer for at least 10 years. It took me a long time to even figure out what brand and model it was due to the lack of good clear pictures from back then. I finally came across a manual on eBay for a Digital Starion line of computers and the picture on the front brought it all back.

Amazingly, I was able to find one being sold on eBay (Starion 942) the very next week. I started trying to research drivers, disks and even advertisements and I found a total of 3 on archive.org in old magazines. The crazy part is that I can't find much of ANYTHING about the Starion Mini Tower line.

Does anyone have one? Know what happened to this line of computers? Im assuming they just got consumed by the Compaq acquisition and retired the line almost as soon as it was launched.

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Reply 1 of 9, by Horun

Posted on 2023-09-06, 02:15

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Nope do not remember it and am near as old as Moses sons 😁 Should be a Pentium 133, 1.6GB HD and 16mb ram if all original.....and uses a Phoenix BIOS (cough, cough 🤣)
Manual: https://theretroweb.com/motherboard/manual/a0 … 5b376664754.pdf
someone else maybe can search deeper....

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 9, by PC Hoarder Patrol

Posted on 2023-09-06, 04:03

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The attachment Popular Mechanics Mar 1996 - DEC Starion 942.jpg is no longer available

Compaq maintained the old Digital PC Software Library after the buy-out, which you can access here - https://web.archive.org/web/20010606170706/ht … ex/epidmstr.htm or you can still access the original here - https://web.archive.org/web/19970717080441/ht … tp/00-index.stm

Reply 3 of 9, by leileilol

Posted on 2023-09-06, 04:06

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All of DEC's x86 machines in the 90s kinda fell into a general memory hole to the internet and it's not just that line (there's a bit of a mandela effect like they only *ever* made Alphas and ancient mainframes/workstations). DEC's site being wayback excluded doesn't help either.

long live PCem

Reply 4 of 9, by darry

Posted on 2023-09-06, 04:19

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I remember the Venturis line and I think I might have seen a Starion in the flesh, a very long time ago.

Reply 5 of 9, by Intel486dx33

Posted on 2023-09-06, 05:12

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Yes, I have a restored 800i in my Garage.
That case is a PAIN to work in.
My hands hurt just talking about it.

Link:
Digital Starion 800i restore.

Reply 6 of 9, by PC Hoarder Patrol

Posted on 2023-09-06, 13:35

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Looks like a fairly brief product lifecycle...

...launch

The attachment Computerworld 14 Nov 1994 - DEC Starion Press Launch.jpg is no longer available

...EOL (January 1996) - http://kpolsson.com/comphist/comp1996.htm

Reply 7 of 9, by rasz_pl

Posted on 2023-09-06, 17:40

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Grant Saviers was responsible for this PC 😀

Oral History of Grant Saviers, part 2 of 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od830KDrLUU

Oral History of Grant Saviers part 1: http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/ … 4-05-01-acc.pdf
Oral History of Grant Saviers part 2: https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources … 7-05-01-acc.pdf

As DEC’s Corporate Vice President of PC Systems and Peripherals from 1990 to 1992 Grant successfully restarted DEC’s PC business from a dormant state and grew revenues to $350M and break-even profitability in 18 months.

@18 minute timestamp - they copied DELL strategy and did pretty good, business was growing and then DEC founder and CEO Ken Olsen decided to kill it. Grant got recruited to lead Adaptec.

https://github.com/raszpl/FIC-486-GAC-2-Cache-Module for AT&T Globalyst
https://github.com/raszpl/386RC-16 memory board
https://github.com/raszpl/440BX Reference Design adapted to Kicad
https://github.com/raszpl/Zenith_ZBIOS MFM-300 Monitor

Reply 8 of 9, by GuyTechie

Posted on 2024-09-28, 04:41

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I owned this exact Digital Station P133 16 MB 1.6 GB HDD 4x CD-ROM 28.8 kbps modem. I remember the sound card and modem was a combination card and the driver was hell to configure. And yeah, it was hard to work on internally.

Can't complain since it was a replacement computer for my Packard Bell 486SX2-50 (later motherboard was replaced due to Circuit City's warranty twice, and after a 3rd time, they just offered a new PC instead).

DN3D was my main game so jumping to a P133 was a nice performance boost and made the play so much better.