On Fri, 16 Mar 2001, Bayard Coolidge USG ZKO3-3/S20 wrote:
>
> Paul Lussier said:
>
> >> What makes the Alpha systems proprietary, I guess "commercial
> >> level" would be a more apropos description, is that it has
> >> things like EEPROMs.
>
> Well, I think we're in danger of getting into a semantic battle
> here, but I'd like to clarify things a bit. The various implementations
> of Alpha-based systems, at least the ones made by DEC and now Compaq,
> tend to follow some rules regarding the console implementation. (And,
> I'm hoping that Rich will jump in here and help me clarify this). Yes,
> it involves EEPROMS (or Flash memory, depending on the box/board),
> but can't the same be said for any Intel architecture-based PC
> motherboard?
I suppose that the argument could be made that on Intel boards, the MB
manufacturer has the ability to choose Phoenix, or AMI etc..'s bios,
whereas with Alpha you're pretty much limited to licensing SRM from Q, or
writing your own, and there is validity to that.
>Can't you set things like the order in which boots are
> attempted between the 'C' drive, the CDROM and/or Floppy? My Asus P2L97DS
> certainly does. The Alpha mobos are a bit pickier about what i/o
> adapters are supported by the console subsystem for booting, to be
> honest (I can't boot off of an Adaptec 2940UW on my old PC164, for
> example). But, we do have bootp capability, and can MOP load (using
> the quasi-proprietary DECnet Maintenance Operations Protocol) console
> firmware, etc.
I won't speak to MOP as I've never dealt with it, but you can also bootp
load console firmware. As for boot devices etc....usually x86 boxes are
limited to reading the first few blocks off the disk and that's about
it. Whereas we have the luxury of a firmware that can talk to the disk,
and load files from it,however we have to pay the price with dev drivers
and all.
> What I think is fascinating is that Rich said he can do a network
> download of a Linux kernel on an Alpha. I've been doing it for years
> under Tru64 UNIX (and its predecessors) and my friends upstairs in
> (Open)VMS can do it, too. I'm not sure that it would be difficult
> to do with Linux. Yes, you'd have to set up a generic kernel, along
> the same concept that various distributions do now for Alpha, IA32,
> and possibly for other architectures. So, when you get down to it,
> it's architecture-specific, but not necessarily proprietary; I believe
> that there is a lot of publically available information on how to do it.
> (I just don't have time to track it down, and it's sometimes difficult
> to determine from here at work what's internal and what's not, and my
> dial-up at home is too slow to make a concerted effort to find out.)
It's a really nice feature for us lazy peole :)
--rdp
--
Rich Payne
[EMAIL PROTECTED] www.alphalinux.org
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