Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 02:53:08 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: gallatin@cs.duke.edu (Andrew Gallatin) Cc: wkb@freebie.demon.nl (Wilko Bulte), tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), msmith@FreeBSD.ORG (Mike Smith), freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Lynx test / 2nd attempt Message-ID: <200012080253.TAA01946@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <14894.58877.158848.243199@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> from "Andrew Gallatin" at Dec 06, 2000 08:26:17 PM
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> > I *think* SRM zeros the RAM for you. And in most cases you have to > > The SRM does not zero memory across warm reboots, at least. > > This gives us opportunities to screw things up royally, like the > problem that jb was seeing with newly installed bootblocks working > until a cold boot. > > Not zeroing also allows all sorts of opportunities for cool hacks. > Like leaving the buffer cache warm in ram, rebooting a box, and not > needing to read the data from back from disk. Have a look at > http://www.eecs.umich.edu/Rio/papers/rioFileCacheTech.ps Well, since MILO is capable of replacing the firmware after it has been loaded by whatever loader... I guess the question is whether or not the SRM firmware can be loaded and replace the AlphaBIOS or ARC firmware, assuming that it's loaded onto the machine, but inactive. This would let us boot from more controllers, and then load FreeBSD into core with the loader, switch the firmware, and, given that the controller is known to FreeBSD, work as we would expect it to work. Not as cool as booting an entirely non-SRM system, but certainly a step forward... Who has an Alpha that can recognize their controller in AlphaBIOS or ARC, but not in SRM? 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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