Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 15:18:39 -0400 From: Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@panix.com> To: alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: interesting quote from http://cnls.lanl.gov/avalon/FAQ.html#A1end Message-ID: <19981009151839.A6704@panix.com> In-Reply-To: <199810080452.WAA11026@harmony.village.org>; from Warner Losh on Wed, Oct 07, 1998 at 10:52:45PM -0600 References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.981008095110.1678B-100000@calis.BlackSun.org> <199810080452.WAA11026@harmony.village.org>
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On Wed, Oct 07, 1998 at 10:52:45PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote: > In message <Pine.BSF.3.96.981008095110.1678B-100000@calis.BlackSun.org> Don writes: > : Do people actually like arc console? the srm console is so much easier to > : use and so much more console like in the first place. Does anyone really > : want to go the direction of menus and such by using a microsoft bios? > > Like/dislike has nothing to do with it. The problem is that there are > many cheaper machines that simply do not have SRM on them at all. A > prudent course would be to support both. Dec has released enough > information to write a boot loader for the ARC/Alpha console (and > microsoft just released enough information to write one for ARC/Mips, > now that it is dead). Being able to write a boot loader is *not* the issue. The fact that the ARC or AlphaBIos console doesn't include PALcode that's UNIX-friendly is the issue. The SRM console image includes VMS and OSF/1 PALcode; NetBSd uses the OSF/1 PALcode. The ARC console includes Windows NT PALcode; Linux hacks around this by including its own PALcode in MILO. This is pretty evil, since the PALcode is very system-specific and it's why there's a different MILO for every damned Alpha system and board they run on. Originally, they got their PALcode from an old version of the OSF/1 PALcode source which was distributed with the EBSDK, the "Evaluation Board Software Development Kit". Since then I'm pretty sure they've separately maintained it, and even when they first picked it up the source on that CD was *not* quite what DEC was including in SRM for the boards that PALcode was for; it was much older and reputedly full of bugs. This is pretty much equivalent to replacing the system BIOS in order to boot and run on an x86 machine, except that it's much worse since the PALcode provides pseudo-instructions which are used while the kernel's up and running. The EBSDK does include a PALcode development guide or some such. >From a cursory examination of the EBSDK license, it's also not entirely clear to me that redistributing the PALcode the way MILO does is 100% kosher, but hey, IANAL. -- Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com "And where do all these highways go, now that we are free?" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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