Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 18:56:06 -0500 (CDT) From: Bruce Burden <brucegb@realtime.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD 4.0 for Alpha and Compaq DS10 Message-ID: <200005122356.SAA53936@sullivan.realtime.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0005121415080.9164-100000@thetics.europa.com> from Linh Pham at "May 12, 2000 02:19:24 pm"
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> > But to my question... will the latest -RELEASE or -CURRENT run on the > DS10? Would anyone have any suggestions on a cheap but somewhat newer > Alpha machine? > Here is what the HARDWARE.TXT has to say about ALPHA machines: In general, what do you need to run FreeBSD/alpha? -------------------------------------------------- Obviously you will need an Alpha machine that FreeBSD/alpha knows about. Alpha machines are NOT like PCs. There are considerable differences between the various chip sets and mainboard designs. This means that a kernel needs to know the intimate details of a particular machine before it can run on it. Throwing some odd GENERIC kernel at unknown hardware is almost guaranteed to fail miserably. For a machine even to be considered for FreeBSD use please make sure it has the SRM console firmware installed. Or at least make sure that SRM console firmware is available for this particular model. If FreeBSD does not currently support your machine type, there is a good chance that this will change some time, assuming there is a SRM available. Machines with the ARC/AlphaBIOS console firmware are intended for WindowsNT. Some of them have SRM firmware available in the system ROMs which you only have to select (via an ARC/AlphaBIOS menu). In other cases you will have to re-flash the ROMs with SRM code. Check on http://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/Alpha/firmware to see what is available for your particular system. In any case: no SRM -> no FreeBSD (or NetBSD, OpenBSD, Tru64 Unix or OpenVMS for that matter). With the demise of WindowsNT/alpha a lot of former NT boxes are sold on the second hand market. They have little or no trade-in value when they are NT-only from the console perspective. So, be suspicious if the price appears too good. Known non-SRM machines are the Digital XL266/XLT300, the Samsung PC164UX and 164BX. The DS10 is listed as one of the machines FreeBSD runs on. It lists several more, of course. You probably should get a copy of this file (/usr/src/release/texts/alpha/HARDWARE.TXT) so you can read the supported hardware for yourself, and decide where to go from there. Bruce To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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