On Tue, 22 Feb 2000, Ross Harvey wrote:

> Well, that's an interesting idea. I presume you meant (no comma) "a bootloader
> similar to milo".
> 
> My comments:
> 	
> 	* Embedding the entire SRM image is really cute, I never thought
> 	  of that...except...if you have SRM, why not just flash it? And
> 	  it probably decompresses itself out of flash .. somehow I think
> 	  the amount of reverse engineering and binary patching to make it
> 	  handoff from the SROM to your code to SRM would be far better
> 	  spent elsewhere on NetBSD.
> 
> 	* Doing that might have some copyright and distribution hangups.
> 	  DEC^WCompaq is very protective of SRM, as it essentially reserves
> 	  OSF/1^WTru64 and VMS for their own HW.
> 
> 	* The palcode bugs only apply to ev56. (Well, maybe ev5 also.)
> 	  I'm sure the milo palcode is fixable, or that a kernel workaround
> 	  could be used. I will say, though, that I tried with no success
> 	  for a few days to fix the ebsdk palcode once, before dec stepped
> 	  in and helped out the project I was on with the real palcode.

	It would only be of real benefit for people who have devices from
	which they can only boot via ARC (Miatas etc :). For them, it
	could be a nice project, though as you say, MILO may be a better
	bet in that case.

	On the subject of other areas of NetBSD, the sparc64 port has
	a list of suggested project at:
		http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/sparc64/projects.html

	Would there be any value in having a similar (though less
	extensive :) list for the alpha port?

		David/absolute