Subject: Re: Questions regarding the Alpha PCI64-275 Motherboard
To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Sigurbj=F6rn?= Birkir =?ISO-8859-1?Q?L=E1russon?= <sibbi@scour.org>
From: Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com>
List: port-alpha
Date: 02/28/1999 09:49:14
Buy a Qlogic SCSI card. They're suppored boot devices. The FIREPORT may
actually work. I'm using a CSC (Corp Sys) 825 as an occasional boot
device.


On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, [ISO-8859-1] Sigurbj=F6rn Birkir [ISO-8859-1] L=E1russ=
on wrote:

> I just obtained a Alpha PCI64-275 Motherboard from Digital.  (Order numbe=
r:
> EK-ALPPI-CL.A01 if that helps).  It's close to working and at this time o=
nly
> needs the 275W weird 3.3v power supply to work, hopefully I'll have it wo=
rking
> by next weekend.  I've been going over the NetBSD-Alpha port pages to see=
 what
> my chances are of running NetBSD on it and I have some basic questions if
> someone could spare the time.
>=20
> As I understand from the System Models page on www.netbsd.org, the floppy
> controller and the IDE controller are not supported by NetBSD.
>=20
> I do have a Fireport 40 UW SCSI controller which will probably not work w=
ith
> the SRM console and therefore cannot be used to boot from.  From what I
> gathered on the System Models page the ISA controller on board doesn't wo=
rk
> with the SRM console either, can the SRM console be updated to support ot=
her
> devices to boot from and if so, where could I get the update, I tried loo=
king
> in the firmware update pages on gatekeeper but didn't exactly have much l=
uck.
>=20
> As I see it I have the following options:
>=20
>   * Buy a network card and boot it from the network.
>   * Buy a 53c810 based SCSI card and boot from a SCSI hard drive.
>   * Wait for the IDE or Floppy controller to be supported (if ever?).
>   * Use the Motherboard for something else.
>=20
> If the floppy driver was supported I could probably just boot the kernel =
from
> floppy and then continue from a SCSI device attached to the Fireport or
> possibly from the IDE controller if NetBSD supports it.
>=20
> Some advice would be greatly appreciated here, bear in mind that I'm a Al=
pha
> newbie but I do know my way around NetBSD and have run it on both i386 an=
d the
> amiga.
>=20
> ---
> Sigurbj=F6rn Birkir L=E1russon -- <sibbi@scour.org>
> http://www.scour.org/ -- IRC nick: Sibbi/Sibbster
> The opinions stated above are not neccesarily those of my employers
> Nostalgia isn't what it used to be -- Simone Signoret
>=20