From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Jul 13 7:40:25 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from iona.dcs.gla.ac.uk (iona.dcs.gla.ac.uk [130.209.240.35]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 78F9537B403 for ; Fri, 13 Jul 2001 07:40:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from neugebar@dcs.gla.ac.uk) Received: from therese.dcs.gla.ac.uk ([130.209.241.134] helo=therese.dcs.gla.ac.uk.dcs.gla.ac.uk) by iona.dcs.gla.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.13 #1) id 15L471-0006s8-00; Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:40:11 +0100 Received: by therese.dcs.gla.ac.uk.dcs.gla.ac.uk (8.11.3/Dumb) id f6DEeAC49323; Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:40:10 +0100 (BST) To: Cc: Subject: Re: FreeBSD install on AlphaBios equipped DEC Alpha's References: <010601c10b78$a1a65c60$0501010a@gamersgarrison.com> From: Rolf Neugebauer Date: 13 Jul 2001 15:40:08 +0100 In-Reply-To: "Group Captain Buzzwang"'s message of "Fri, 13 Jul 2001 03:48:46 -0500" Message-ID: Lines: 53 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0805 (Gnus v5.8.5) Emacs/20.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG "Group Captain Buzzwang" writes: > I have 4 DEC Alpha XLT's here (all are 300mhz 256m ram) that I have > wanted to put to use for some time. I really, really wanted to install > FBSD on them but FBSD doesn't support an Alpha that isn't using SRM > firmware. All 4 of mine are equipped with the latest (v5.66) AlphaBIOS > as that is all that is available anymore from Digital/Compaq. I queried > them about it a couple months ago and the reply was rather abrupt: "It's > not available." > > I just finished installing Debian GNU/Linux on one of them. I tried it > because I was told that Debian has a method of using the AlphaBIOS (made > for installing WinNT only) to install and run Linux. > > It seems Debian uses to files: linload.exe and another referred to as > MILO (Mini Loader) to bootstrap the OS into operation. It actually works > out quite well, and I was a little surprised to see things running in a > short time. Problem is that I want to use FBSD, not Linux, on these > boxes. I have nothing against Linux, but I figure that it's better to > run FBSD with Linux support than just straight Linux. That and I find > that I really like FBSD anyway. > > I was wondering if someone was working on a project for FBSD to achieve > this same function for AlphaBIOS-based machines. I'm not a programmer or > anything like that, and though I would like to help create this for > FBSD, I don't know where or how to start. So I thought I would simply > suggest it and hope that some other, more seasoned, programmers could > run with it. I assume that it would be entirely possible since other > Unix-like system already do it, and believe that it would basically come > down to understanding how the Linux folks do it and then to recreate it > for FBSD. If someone is currently or starts to work on this and needs > helps testing it out, contact me. I've still got 3 more Alpha boxes > collecting dust that would be more than happy to help. Alpha based systems use something called PAL code as a low level interface to an OS. AlphaBIOS and SRM provide different PAL code: AlphaBIOS for NT and SRM for OSF^WTru64/VMS. MILO provides a subset of the SRM PAL code just enough to run Linux on. This PAL code was derived from publicly available sample PAL code from DEC/Q as part of their software development kit for alpha and is considered by some as somewhat buggy (and MILO just being a horrible hack). FreeBSD requires more of the SRM PAL code than provided by MILO, thus FreeBSD won't run with MILO. I am not aware of any efforts to add the missing functionality. In fact, I would be highly surprised if such an effort exist as it is a seriously non-trivial undertaking. Rolf To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message