I was thinking... what about those SATA cards with SCSI emulation? maybe it can be possible to trick SRM into thinking it's an SCSI card. It's insane, I know...
Currently, I keep the original 9GB SCSI disk and card just to boot the system, but I wonder if I can use one of those CF 2 IDE and assemble all boot stuff on a single, unexpensive, let's say 512 MB CF card or so... I gave a lot of thought into that boot issue, but at sometime we have to accept that we simply can't mix old and new technology. However, I would really welcome solutions to get rid of the SCSI card and disk and free one of the PCI slots. I even had USB working on the same machine, until the card burned itself. But the alpha itself is brave and kept running despite of it's advanced age. Geoff 2011/3/28 Witold Baryluk <[email protected]> > On 03-28 17:42, Geoff Martin wrote: > > I do use a 1TB disk on my 164LX using a pci SATA card. However I was > never > > able to boot from it. Maybe by pure lack of knowledge, or maybe because > it's > > not possible at all. If anyone know the magic, please share the magic > words > > I think it is impossble to do in SRM. > > In AlphaBIOS with X86 emulation enabled it COULD be possible > to run such PCI SATA card with its own BIOS, so it will intercept. > But I do not know what is the state of booting of Linux using AlphaBIOS > at all. aboot and MILO do not support it AFAIK, and AFAIK there is no grub > port. > > So, by running I was saying that I will boot using other means > (build-in or other supported SCSI or built-in IDE, network using > BOOTP+TFTP), > and then use PCI SATA controler using Linux drivers. > > For example in one of my XP1000, i was using Promise FastTrak100 TX2, > to connect one more IDE disk (becuase XP1000 have only ONE IDE port > exposed, > and it was filled with CDROM and IDE/ATA drive already). It was also > becasue I was investigating DMA problems with bulit-in IDE controler. > This card works under Linux, but I have still had some corruptions, > so I will attribute it to the DMA. > This is very misterious, and would like to investigate it further. > (Because this maybe mean i cannot use SATA controler which > probably in all cases use DMA). > > Regards, > Witek > > -- > Witold Baryluk > JID: witold.baryluk // jabster.pl > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) > > iEYEARECAAYFAk2Q9vEACgkQ7ZLFFOttZ4ISnwCeIpfyncZnBkE4HJxxMVSe4CUu > nuwAoNMb64dDmrD509KvmStw2lNdvDHH > =JcW/ > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > >
