Subject: Re: Q: Compaq, *BSD and 'Linux-only' AlphaBIOS (fwd)
To: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
From: Doug Rabson <dfr@nlsystems.com>
List: port-alpha
Date: 12/05/1999 16:29:21
On Sat, 4 Dec 1999, Jason Thorpe wrote:

> On Sat, 4 Dec 1999 18:46:18 -0500 
>  Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com> wrote:
> 
>  > productive to waste it persuading DEC to release SRM for more platforms,
>  > or to release the unmodified source code to a _current_ SRM, including
>  > the PALcode.
> 
> Or, Hell, just the PALcode for the various processor models, and the
> documentation necessary to implement console software (i.e. the interrupt
> routing goo for the various models that we need console software for).

Isn't that just PC164 and similar? The irq masking hardware for that is
documented now I think.

The only reason there was a special PALcode call for that platform was
that the irq mask wasn't readable (reads show current active irqs) and the
PALcode needed to know the mask in order to figure out what vector to
report.

--
Doug Rabson				Mail:  dfr@nlsystems.com
Nonlinear Systems Ltd.			Phone: +44 181 442 9037