Howdy NetBSD/Alpha hackers!

> It's an _awful_ lot of work (note that Linux actually had DEC
> engineers working on the Alpha support)...  A fair start, e.g. much of
> the PALcode that DEC released, is in the MILO code.
> 
> I really wish that DEC would just ship SRM console on all of their
> alphas...  It _really_ wouldn't be that hard, and Linux wants to use
> the interfaces it provides, as well...
>

I think the best would be if NetBSD/Alpha could boot from Milo.I see
5 reason why this would be great:

1) Full access to the source. (Well, in the latest and greatest release of
   milo, they have replaced the free x86 emulator, with decs commercial one
   (which are part of SRM), so that is realeased as a binary object only, but
   its a compiletime chooseable, so if your gfxcards/whatever gets initialized
   ok with the free x86 emulator, you can use that instead).

2) Milo consumes only 96k memory (~260 if you want to keep the compressed milo
   image in memory so that you can easily reboot) compared to SRM's 2M.

3) It can act as a 2nd firmware to thoose who don't want to reprogram their
   firmware. (the old version could only be called from ARC, but in the
   latest it is even supposed to work if you call it from SRM).

4) Myself likes to be able to boot Linux & NetBSD. But I really like Milo, so
   its a hassle to be forced to reprogram SRM every time I want to check the
   status of NetBSD.

5) I guess some ppl would be interested in being able to boot from an ide
   drive, which SRM can't.

Just my $0.02 :-)

/Mikael