* Brian Evans <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [070615 18:38]: > The current DEC Alpha boot loaders MILO and aboot are unmaintained and > frequently break with newer tool chains and kernels.
I have a machine for aboot, but I don't have a machine for MILO anymore. MILO is still up and running on http://milo.coresystems.de/ but I had no requests for changes in several years now. > How hard would it be to add Alpha to Grub-2? It'd probably be a lot easier to add support for SRM based systems than for AlphaBIOS/ARCS based systems since those are using a 32bit PAL code, effectively making the machine a 32bit machine on the BIOS level. The workaround is to load 64bit PAL codes, such as those found in SRM or MILO. The draw back is that you can not use BIOS callbacks anymore after switching the PAL code so you have to provide your own SCSI drivers for each controller. Hence MILO was married with the Linux kernel in a more than unnatural way. One possible scenario however: 1. Get the latest SRM PAL codes for all machines supported by MILO (MILOs PAL codes suck!) 2. Strip down MILO so it does not link against the kernel at all anymore. I know Nikita worked on that a long time ago and I removed that stuff. I had to learn the hard way that this was a mistake 3. Patch Linload.exe/Loadlin.exe to load MILO plus a Kernel plus an initrd from the DOS partition. Jay, do you have the sources for the Ruffian loader? Is it still closed up? Could we change it and recompile it? 4. Have MILO start the Linux kernel from RAM loaded by 3. 5. Use kexec and whatever neat userspace utility to load the real Kernel from disk. Or just write the real kernel to the DOS partition and load it from there with no kexec in the game. The big problem that kept me from trying that is that you need the AlphaBIOS SDK (?) installed on a Windows box to patch loadlin.exe/linload.exe and you need an (Alpha?) Windows box for that which I did not have at the time. > However, I do have an Alpha box to test with (read: break). SRM? Alpha BIOS? > Although the Alpha platform is no longer producing any new machines, > many exist as servers or workstations and could be reused as Linux machines. I want to revive mine, too, but I think I gave my Permedia2 card away by accident and I dont have a supported card at the moment that would also work in VMS :-( Guess Ebay is my friend. Stefan -- coresystems GmbH • Brahmsstr. 16 • D-79104 Freiburg i. Br. Tel.: +49 761 7668825 • Fax: +49 761 7664613 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] • http://www.coresystems.de/ _______________________________________________ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel