From owner-freebsd-alpha  Tue May 13 18:48:37 1997
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From: clemc@polaris.mro.dec.com
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To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Cc: rose@pa.dec.com, dhunter@pa.dec.com
Subject: SRM vs ARC vs ``Alpha BIOS''
Really-From: Clement T. Cole
Organization: Technical Director, SPE; Digital Equipment Corp; 508-467-3614
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In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 06 May 97 18:13:14 PDT."
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Date: Mon, 12 May 97 14:40:43 -0400
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Jordan,
	It turns out that Alpha's have some slick Intel BIOS emulation
called the ``Alpa BIOS.'' This is used by both ARC and SRM to set
up add-in cards.  I had a long chat with Dave Hunter today, and Dave
is going to talk to him friends in NT-Land that know the most about
this.  The more he and I talked, the more it sounds like this the
technology that you need to be looking at for raw boot.  My guess
is that you will be able to use it get to the traditional FreeBSD
bootstrap code, similar to the way you do now with the modified
CMU Mach/Oliveti-Intel boot loader [which calls in the ROM-BIOS].
	You are still likely to need help with the PAL code.
You will need to support some of it, the question is how much and what.

Clem