> Is the Alpha FFS format compatible with the i386 format?  Specifically, is 
> the endieness the same, and do the 64-bit/32-bit pointers make a difference?

yes, endianness is the same.  There are no pointers stored as useful
information in the on-disk file system.

however...  the disklabel formats are slightly different.  I'm not
sure if they're in the same places on the alpha and i386, but even if
they are, the alpha requires a special checksum that the i386 doesn't
know how to generate.


> I. e. if I wanted to build a filesystem to set up a NetBSD/Alpha machine, 
> could I do it successfully on a NetBSD/i386 machine and just move the drive 
> over?  (I don't have OSF/1 for the machine -- it came with Windows NT.)

take the disk image i supplied.  use dd.

that (or something equivalent) will work on any UNIX system that
supports writing a file to a raw SCSI disk.  8-)


chris