Date: Mon, 01 Jun 1998 12:46:07 -0700 From: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov> To: Doug Rabson <dfr@nlsystems.com> Cc: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, cjs@portal.ca, mike@smith.net.au, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: AlphaBIOS documentation Message-ID: <199806011946.MAA28219@lestat.nas.nasa.gov>
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On Mon, 1 Jun 1998 20:10:53 +0100 (BST) Doug Rabson <dfr@nlsystems.com> wrote: > >From what I understand, they are just untested in 64bit addressing modes. > Personally, I think this is short term brain damage which will disappear > when NT supports 64bit addressing. You understand wrong. It is silly to say "they are just untested in 64bit addressing modes". The Alpha is _fundamentally_ a 64-bit architecture; all addresses, as far as the hardware is concerned, are 64 bits wide. No, the unconfirmed rumor is that these chips are missing the piece that allows the superpage to be moved. I.e. the KSEG is hardwired at 0x80000000 (just where it lives on the MIPS; it is normally configurable, and lives at 0xfffffc0000000000 in the OSF/1 PALcode). However, like I said, this rumor/threat has never been confirmed. I've heard lots of reports of "NT-only" systems running SRM consoles (and NetBSD :-) just fine, if you can get the SRM image for the Digital UNIX version of the platform. There is another rumor that some of these NT systems have suicide logic in the SROM that refuses to load anything other than an ARC console image. Who knows, really... Jason R. Thorpe thorpej@nas.nasa.gov NASA Ames Research Center Home: +1 408 866 1912 NAS: M/S 258-5 Work: +1 650 604 0935 Moffett Field, CA 94035 Pager: +1 650 428 6939 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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