Subject: Re: Booting from IDE on Multia
To: Graham Allan <allan@physics.umn.edu>
From: David Brownlee <abs@netbsd.org>
List: port-alpha
Date: 02/15/2000 20:19:43
	Can you boot a compressed kernel from floppy and then run from
	IDE?


		David/absolute

On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Graham Allan wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 15, 2000 at 01:07:52PM -0700, Miles Nordin wrote:
> > On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Guan Yang wrote:
> > 
> > > But the NetBSD FAQs suggest that this is not possible; perhaps only
> > > Linux can boot from IDE on Multia?
> > 
> > ergh.  thanks for saying ``weird.''  I'm only gradually losing sensitivity
> > to comments of this form.  Anyway the deal is this all depends on your
> > console code.  Linux can use AlphaBIOS or srm, while NetBSD requires srm.
> > The reasons why are stated here:
> > 
> >  http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/alpha/faq.html#milo
> > 
> > This requirement is very unlikely to change in the future.
> > 
> > You can try downloading and upgrading to the latest srm (URL's are
> > available in the Alpha FAQ) and see if that supports IDE booting.  I know
> > IDE boot support was added to the srm for some of the 21164 systems in
> > later revisions.  If this works for you, let us know and point us to the
> > part of the FAQ you read so we can document what you did.
> 
> I've been meaning to check this myself: see if the later SRM consoles
> for the Multia can make use of IDE devices. It does seem unlikely
> though. The Multia SRMs all date from circa 1996 or so, and there was
> no support for IDE in Digital UNIX or VMS in that timeframe. They
> probably only added it to the 21164 SRM for CDROM support.
> 
> Graham
>