Date: Sat, 24 Apr 1999 11:03:49 +0100 (BST) From: Doug Rabson <dfr@nlsystems.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> Cc: Rich Payne <rdp@talisman.alphalinux.org>, Alpha List <alpha@freebsd.org>, "Daniel J. Frasnelli" <dfrasnel@csee.wvu.edu> Subject: Re: your mail Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9904241052420.28204-100000@herring.nlsystems.com> In-Reply-To: <33412.924905918@zippy.cdrom.com>
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On Fri, 23 Apr 1999, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > I just talked with one of our engineers here about the docs/SDK > > etc... for AlphaBIOS. Evidently there is no documentation for AlphaBIOS, > > the docs being the source itself, the problem being that parts of the > > source were written/are copyrighted by Microsoft. So in order to get those > > you'd have to sign an NDA with MS. Not good. > > Grumble. That's quite unfortunate. :( Thanks for letting me know, > in any case. 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. 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. 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. -- 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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