Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 09:44:12 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: tls@rek.tjls.com Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG, netbsd-alpha@netbsd.org Subject: Re: ARC/AlphaBIOS (164UX boards) .. was: Re: horrible hack / SRM Message-ID: <199901230944.CAA14017@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <19990123015811.A17699@rek.tjls.com> from "Thor Lancelot Simon" at Jan 23, 99 01:58:11 am
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> > Not to mention that Milo replaces the microcode with something other > > than SRM and other than ARC, etc, and as a result is constantly > > playing catch-up with new boards. > > You're missing the point. SRM, too, requires "constantly playing catch-up > with new boards". Yes, but as a DEC product, it's DEC engineers doing the catching up, not 14 year old Linux fanatics with no hardware documentation and a poor understanding of copyright law as it applies to clean-room coding practices. > The cheap new boards don't have SRM *because Compaq > wasn't willing to pay anyone to port it, or their vendors weren't > willing to license it and then pay someone to port it. That's a different animal altogether. > The do-it-yourself SRM kit costs a whopping $75. In fact, it's what > MILO is (partially) based on. And that's a license and a non-disclosure violation. > > Someone should approach Compaq about SRM, now that DEC is no longer > > anally trying to keep everything $120 more expensive than running > > NT for some sill ass reason... > > Why bother? A cook-your-own SRM kit is $75, MILO is free, but you still > have to port either one of them to every new board just like you'd have > to port a PC's BIOS -- they do very analogous things. > > Unfortunately, the PALcode in the SRM kit is quite old, doesn't work with > many newer boards, and is known to be rather buggy, but the MILO folks > have updated it (obviously). The question is where on *earth* to get > the PALcode source MILO's built from. >From my memory of the Linux Alpha port, back when it was first being ported by a student at the University of Arizona in Tucson, the city I was located in at the time, you get the sources by pirating them from DEC using the state of Arizona's University site license, and then hacking them to not intentioanally lock up with less than 32M (16M), and then getting retroactive verbal permission from DEC to distribute them, solely for use with Linux. Of course, someone could have documentation proving this memory wrong; if so, it'd be nice if they came forward. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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