Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 06:09:19 -0700 From: Brandon Gillespie <brandon@roguetrader.com> To: freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: ARC/AlphaBIOS (164UX boards) .. was: Re: horrible hack / SRM console Message-ID: <19990121060919.A25024@cold.org>
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--FCuugMFkClbJLl1L Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu> wrote: > And this is going to become a much bigger issue once all the 164lx > boards sell out, as vendors are claiming they will. Samsung's 164lx > replacement, the 164ux, apparently works only with AlphaBios. From > what I've read, DEC's new low-end 164RX board will lack SRM support as > well. My company is engineering an alpha computer/sales division, for doing online sales. I have been encouraged by the FreeBSD port effort, as I much prefer FreeBSD to linux, but it looks as if we are going to be using the UX board for our mainstay. Infact, we do not really have much choice, if we buy from Samsung (aka Alpha Processors Inc/API). They have the 164UX/BX available in the 2MB and 4MB, and they will soon also have another board which uses daughter boards to provide dual CPU capability--I believe it is 164UX based as well. Any other board which they have produced in the past have reached the end of their life, and they will NOT be producing any more. Some people may still have a few stocked, but that is it. The problem is, of course, that these motherboards ONLY seem to support the AlphaBIOS. I'm still digging trying to find the SRM, but I cannot. On API's site they even list the firmware as simply being AlphaBIOS, and the ONLY OSes they list as being able to run on it are NT and Linux (note the lack of Digital Unix, *sigh*). Also, I'm just getting into this so I appologize if I offend anybody ;) But why not join camps and try to fork MILO to work with FreeBSD, but basing off the same code base it seems it'd be easier to keep up to date for BOTH camps... However, I suspect this effort (ARC boot) is further along than I realize, so I shall desist :) As it stands, our default OS when the site rolls out in a month will be Linux, with NT as an option. I would _love_ to have FreeBSD as an option (even if it still needs maturing :) And to end...after having evaluated the boards I must say they are very nice. Onboard everything--UW2 scsi, IDE and 10/100 NIC. And cheap too (Alpha prices have really dropped all across the board... finally :) -Brandon Gillespie --FCuugMFkClbJLl1L Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 5.0i for non-commercial use MessageID: C3eWD9p9GzyRhyQLCGGijKf/whhL+u54 iQA/AwUBNqcm/Uv5XoQiMgn6EQJMVwCcDKHXk/8xHdl5b0OlqJK9TiceE6oAni+W WAGSiVBAzkNU6KOS+9/fsxEi =NAr8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --FCuugMFkClbJLl1L-- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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