Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 12:43:58 +0000 (GMT) From: Doug Rabson <dfr@nlsystems.com> To: Brandon Gillespie <brandon@roguetrader.com> Cc: freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ARC/AlphaBIOS (164UX boards) .. was: Re: horrible hack / SRM console Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.01.9901221242380.59627-100000@herring.nlsystems.com> In-Reply-To: <19990121060919.A25024@cold.org>
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On Thu, 21 Jan 1999, Brandon Gillespie wrote: > 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 :) Stefan Esser is working on AlphaBIOS booting at the moment but it is very early days. We are still at the stage of reverse-engineering the M$ executable format... -- Doug Rabson Mail: dfr@nlsystems.com Nonlinear Systems Ltd. Phone: +44 181 442 9037 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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