From owner-freebsd-alpha Sat Dec 4 17:16:48 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Received: from feral.com (feral.com [192.67.166.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 169481536F; Sat, 4 Dec 1999 17:16:42 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mjacob@feral.com) Received: from semuta.feral.com (semuta [192.67.166.70]) by feral.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id RAA11572; Sat, 4 Dec 1999 17:16:27 -0800 Date: Sat, 4 Dec 1999 17:16:27 -0800 (PST) From: Matthew Jacob Reply-To: mjacob@feral.com To: Mike Smith Cc: Andrew Reilly , alpha@FreeBSD.ORG, port-alpha@netbsd.org Subject: Re: Q: Compaq, *BSD and 'Linux-only' AlphaBIOS (fwd) In-Reply-To: <199912050105.RAA05534@mass.cdrom.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > > The *BSD reliance on the SRM seems to basically limit the Alpha > > purchase choices to Compaq. I.e., not Samsung/AlphaProcessor. > > This is currently correct. It is, however, erroneous to think that > either a) we're not aware of this, or b) we're somehow indifferent or > inactive on the subject. I know for a fact that the folks on the FreeBSD > side of the fence have been pursuing every avenue we've come across, and > I hardly expect the NetBSD people have been any less active. There are > simply some very substantial obstacles currently in the way of a > breakthrough. The SRM vs. AlphaBios/ARC issues are a phantom. *BSD has a long way to go to fully support the SRM capapble machines before worrying about platforms which don't have SRM. This is a sideshow. I would have said it was more critical if Tru64 died, but much to &my& surprise it was NT-Alpha that walked the plank, not DUh (now Tru64). Given that Tru64 is very successfully selling on the leading new Dompaq platforms (and depends on SRM), I rather doubt *BSD will get all that left behind because we've not gotten ARC/AlphaBios yet. If somebody wants to continue doing ARC/AlphaBios- that'd be great, but even better for *BSD (all of *BSD) would be making sure that Tru64 binaries like Oracle and so on can be successfully run- and that support for AdvFS gets into *BSD happens. Those two items would generate considerably more interest in *BSD on Alphas than ARC/AlphaBios support. -matt p.s.: note that I very carefully am saying *BSD here- all of the *BSD systems would benefit in coordinating on this. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message