> As I understand it, you need to have the Digital Unix PAL code (SRM) > installed to run Plan 9. I don't know if it can have SRM and the VMS > PAL code (ARC?) installed simultaneously.
I certainly don't claim to be an expert on this, but my understanding is a little different. First, as far as I can tell ARC and AlphaBIOS do the same thing, and I think ARC may be a predecessor or earlier name for AlphaBIOS. These and SRM are basically console monitors much like OpenBoot on Sun (but without Forth). ARC/AlphaBIOS is for WindowsNT and SRM is for UNIX and OpenVMS. The PALcode is a separate thing loaded by the boot loader usually. I can't find a reference to tell me for sure, but I think that OpenVMS and WinNT use the same PALcode. At least I wouldn't be surprised since they both use things like the MMU pretty much the same way. As to whether all these components can be on a machine simultaneously, it depends on the actual machine. As far as I can tell, it depends on the size of the flash more than anything. My DS5300 has it all there, even though officially it's only supposed to run WinNT. But don't tell my NetBSD installation. One of these days, though, I'd love to see if I can get Plan 9 on it. BLS
