Date: Thu, 15 May 97 17:23:07 -0700 From: "Chris G. Demetriou" <cgd@pa.dec.com> To: Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@CS.Duke.EDU> Cc: Curt Sampson <cjs@portal.ca>, freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Alpha questions.. Message-ID: <727.863742187@dnaunix.pa.dec.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 15 May 97 19:34:36 EDT." <199705152334.TAA03950@hurricane.cs.duke.edu>
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> > No. You'll just have a heck of a lot of different PALcode versions > > to write. From looking at the source to MILO, it appears that they > > have at least six different versions of the PALcode for different > > machines, and a MILO compiled with any particular version will only > > work on matching machines, nothing else. > > Right. *Exactly* like SRM. There's a unique version of the SRM console > for all the machines it supports, partially because each machine > requires a different version of the OSF Palcode. Yup. The question is who maintains them. > > Whereas, if you use the > > OSF1 PALcode, you have to go to the effort of duplicating PALcode > > only on those machines that don't support OSF1 PALcode at all, > > rather than all new Alpha machines. > > I think the PALcode included in Milo was obtained directly from > Digital by Milo's author. From looking at the copyright's & RCS id's > on it, it would appear to really be the OSF palcode. The PALcode in Milo is, as far as i know, the same code (or similar to the code) that's in the EBSDK. Let me repeat again: The PALcode interfaces provided by Milo are vitally, functionally different on several platforms from the interfaces provided by the SRM console on those platforms. > As far as I can tell, Digital UNIX, NetBSD, and Linux all use the OSF > PALcode. NT appears to use its own, which has probably been munged > somehow for use by a 32-bit OS. Digital UNIX and NetBSD use the same PALcode interfaces. Linux uses slightly different ones, on some systems (a subset of those used by NetBSD/DU). It's worth noting that (last i heard), Linux cannot 'reboot' if booted from the SRM console. At least from where I stand, that's a bug... chris
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