> [ ... booting with ARC ... ]
>
> Of course, none of this solves the PAL code problems :-)

Of course, your suggestion also requires that the ARC console load the
image into the right place in memory, and give it the right
environment in which to run.

Unfortunately, as you've noted, the PALcode would be a serious problem
with this approach.  NT PALcode is entirely different (can you say
"32-bit virtual machine"? 8-) than the OSF/1 PALcode, so it's not
worth even thinking about running with NT PALcode.

Also, using ARC provides no reasonable way to do a multi-level boot
scheme (i.e. boot block loads kernel), because there's no way to write
the boot block so that it can load the kernel (the console callbacks
are not knowable without an NDA), nor any way to do network booting.
I also am not sure that the ARC console will work reasonably with a
serial console, though that should be pretty easy to verify.


I seem to recall thinking that there were a few other problems, when i
started this message, but i've now forgotten them.  I guess that means
it's time to go to sleep...  8-)


chris