Subject: Re: Booting NetBSD-alpha
To: None <mtaylor@cybernet.com>
From: Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@isds.Duke.EDU>
List: port-alpha
Date: 02/29/1996 09:37:03
Mark J. Taylor writes:
 > Now I've got to teach the ARC BIOS how to start off of this disk.
 > I've got no idea how to do this.  All of the environment variables in
 > the ARC BIOS were set using a 'magic Windows/NT installation mantra'.
 > 
 > Is there ANY hope of setting up a set of ARC BIOS environment variables
 > to get NetBSD to boot?  I've read all of the docs/READMEs that come with

No.  You need to switch to the SRM console.  Assuming you have an
Alphastation 2/400 series, the directions for doing this from the ARC
console are (from page 1-11 of the User Information manual):
- select Supplementary menu
- select Set up the system
- select Switch to OpenVMS or OSF console
- select Switch to OpenVMS
	or
- select Switch to OSF
- select Setup menu...
- powercycle to implement the change.

to switch back from srm to arc, type 'set os_type nt' & power-cycle.

If you don't have a machine capable of running the SRM console, I
think you're out of luck..  It would be really nice if somebody had
the time, knowledge and hardware to implement something like Linux's
milo boot loader for NetBSD so that NetBSD wasn't dependant on the SRM
console..

Drew