From owner-freebsd-alpha Sat Apr 24 5:12:28 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Received: from talisman.mv.com (talisman.mv.com [207.22.43.150]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9A95314CBF for ; Sat, 24 Apr 1999 05:12:24 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rdp@talisman.alphalinux.org) Received: from localhost (rdp@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by talisman.mv.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id IAA06704; Sat, 24 Apr 1999 08:12:08 -0400 Date: Sat, 24 Apr 1999 08:12:08 -0400 (EDT) From: Rich Payne X-Sender: rdp@talisman.mv.com To: Doug Rabson Cc: "Jordan K. Hubbard" , Alpha List , "Daniel J. Frasnelli" Subject: Re: your mail In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > I am confused. I have come fairly good documentation for AlphaBIOS > (basically the mips ARC docs and a couple of files listing alpha function > numbers). I found this by following links from the source to linload.exe > which lives at ftp://ftp.europe.digital.com/pub/DEC/Linux-Alpha/linload/. > I already have enough information on Digital's AlphaBIOS firmware to build > test programs which work. Yup, the original MIPS spec is available, I even put it up on ftp.alphalinux.org for people to get access to. > The particular problem which I have with the Samsung board is that its > firmware is not AlphaBIOS but instead is a modified ARC style system. I > need information on what specific differences the Samsung firmware > programming interface has compared to Digital's AlphaBIOS firmware. My > test programs which work on AlphaBIOS do not work with the Samsung > firmware. I believe that Linux also needs a specially modified version of > their loader for this board. Which Samsung board? > Why on earth didn't Samsung just use AlphaBIOS. It is bizarre that they > felt the need to invent their own firmware and even managed to change the > api so that it is incompatible. Samsung does use AlphaBIOS. Are you talking about the UX board? The UX was not designed by Samsung. It was designed by DeskStation. Samsung just produces the board now. As far as I know the ARCS BIOS is used in the UX and only the UX, and I don't think there are any plans for it to go on any boards, unless DeskStation decides to design another. The specially modified loader you are talking about is ldmilo.exe (instead of linload.exe). I don't know if the source is available for that, presumably DeskStation still holds the copyright. So it would be best to take it up with them. --rdp Rich Payne rpayne@alphalinux.org www.alphalinux.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message