Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 26 Apr 2000 19:21:43 +0200
From:      Wilko Bulte <wkb@chello.nl>
To:        Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com>
Cc:        "Waite, Michael" <Michael.Waite@compaq.com>, freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: switching from arc to srm
Message-ID:  <20000426192143.D1021@yedi.wbnet>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10004260853120.81953-100000@beppo.feral.com>; from mjacob@feral.com on Wed, Apr 26, 2000 at 08:58:34AM -0700
References:  <212CC57E84B8D111AD780000F84AA049083C327B@mroexc2.tay.dec.com> <Pine.BSF.4.10.10004260853120.81953-100000@beppo.feral.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Wed, Apr 26, 2000 at 08:58:34AM -0700, Matthew Jacob wrote:
> 
> If there is co-resident SRM f/w in these machines, there will be an ARC menu
> entry item (they'll have to hunt for it- I can't remember which submenu it's
> under) that says something like "Set up for booting Digital Unix after next
> power cycle".
> 
> If there isn't, they have to make a DOS floppy (or get the FW cdrom)  and put
> the appropriate for their platform fwupdate.exe and SRM do the 'update f/w'
> selection. I just did this recently for a PC164 I bought that had only ARC on
> it.

And to add to that: there are some machines that *only* have ARC available,
there is no SRM in existence for them. Machines like XL266 etc come to mind.

> You and they should note that Digital built some machines (I can't remember
> exactly which ones) that cannot possibly run FreeBSD-alpha (or Tru64 either)-
> there was, inside the chip, some address lines lasered out. This seemed to be
> strange for a number of reasons..talk about gelding (cough) the lily....

This is an urban legend. The trick is done differently, although I cannot
tell you how (NDA as part of my job contract at Compaq). There have been
discussions about producing NT-only CPU silicon but all people I spoke to 
at our facility (we used to have the European repair site for Alpha
systems/boards) deny that the idea of specific silicon was implemented.

W/
-- 
Wilko Bulte 		Powered by FreeBSD  	http://www.freebsd.org
						http://www.tcja.nl


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20000426192143.D1021>