Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 22:47:03 -0500 (EST) From: Don <don@calis.BlackSun.org> To: Stuart Krivis <stuart@apk.net> Cc: freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: alpha PC Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9902042227050.63145-100000@calis.BlackSun.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.05.9902041024140.18215-100000@junior.apk.net>
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> I am also puzzled as to why *BSD wouldn't work with ARC. ARC is just > another way of calling the boot loader. MILO for Linux works with either > ARC or SRM. The following is basically what I understand to be the situation with ARC and SRM and MILO: ARC and SRM aren't just boot loaders. They also define a set of low level functions for interaction with the hardware. In order to work with a 64 bit platform ARC has a limited subset of these system calls which are only 32 bits. (A certain bloated poorly implemented Windowing New Technology 32 bit operating system needs these calls in order to be able to run on the Alpha). Since FreeBSD does not want to limit itself by using ARC (which would restrict a lot of the low level calls to 32 bit ones), they are working on other solutions similar to MILO. What MILO does is basically install it's own firmware. ARC boots and then MILO runs and installs it's own firmware code into memory. This code resides in memory until the machine is rebooted and it replaces all of the poor ARC calls with its own thus restoring true 64 bit capability to the system. As far as I know MILO requires ARC firmware because it gets loaded from a DOS partition by ARC at boot time. -Don To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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