On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Guan Yang wrote:

> The guy who wrote http://www.multimania.com/multia uses Linux, and he
> boots that weird operating system from an IDE drive in his Multia. He
> confirmed this to me via email.
> 
> But the NetBSD FAQs suggest that this is not possible; perhaps only
> Linux can boot from IDE on Multia?

I believe this stems from the fact that NetBSD boots from the SRM, while
Linux boots from the ARC.  IIRC, the ARC firmware understands how to talk
to the IDE controller while the SRM doesn't.  Using the ARC for NetBSD
requires that we write a new piece of abstraction code (the PAL, I think),  
which I believe to be rather difficult.  I think Linux either 1) has a
custom one, or 2) uses the NT PAL code.

You might want to see if other people agree with this - alpha boot
processes ain't my specialty ;-\

-Jon
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