Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1998 17:16:53 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: dfr@nlsystems.com (Doug Rabson) Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: AlphaBIOS documentation Message-ID: <199806011716.KAA10899@usr04.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.95q.980530114705.15699Z-100000@herring.nlsystems.com> from "Doug Rabson" at May 30, 98 11:50:41 am
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> Does anyone know if there is documentation available for the ARC or > AlphaBIOS boot sequence? In particular, what services does the firmware > provide to the bootstrap program (e.g. linload.exe). Alternatively, does > anyone know where I can find the source code to linload.exe? You aren't using the OSF/1 PALcode? I think this is a mistake for an initial port. Is your Linux using the ARC code? The person at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, where I used to live, who did the initial Linux Alpha work was using a modified OSF PALcode (it was modified to allow as "little" as 16M of RAM). If you have an NT system, I would suggest disassembling the bootstrap for the purposes of documenting the interface. NT generally runs in protected mode as early as possible. One of the reasons NT is so hardware limited is that it, like FreeBSD, fails to implement a BIOS interface for use by drivers to allow it to "fall back" to a VMM-based driver. With this in mind, you should expect that the ARC/AlphaBIOS code is abandoned as soon ass the NT kernel image is loaded. You are probably going to have a problem supporting the NT PALcode in general because of VM differences. You may want to contact Chris Demetriou; I *think* he can still be reached at cgd@NetBSD.ORG. 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-hackers" in the body of the message
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