Thanks. I was actually wondering if that was what I had to do. kinda stinks 
though, because now I have to dig out that 4 GB IDE drive I have floating 
around somewhere... but at least it will be on an Alpha. Thanks again
-- Stefan

PS:
I knew that the CD-ROM was dka0 (simply by mistake from when I looked in 'show 
device'), however, when I say 'b dka0' it returns a message to the tone of 
"unable to open device dka0.0.4.0". Yet when I booted the machine with the 
floppies, used the CD device fine. Any thoughts on that?

>===== Original Message From "Christian von Kleist" <cvk@zybx.com> =====
Stefan,

My have the same PWS500a system with an Adaptec 2940uw controller.
The SRM is incapable of recognizing it even with the newest firmware
(SRM v7.2). I have "solved" (eschewed) this problem by installing
NetBSD on an 8.4 gig IDE drive on the primary IDE interface (moved
the CD-ROM to secondary). I now use the SCSI drive for extra space.

Alternatively, your kernel could boot from / on the IDE drive and
mount userland partitions on the SCSI disk. Also, the kernel could
boot from a floppy and then mount userland on the SCSI disk, but
that's kind of gross.

If you are having trouble booting from the CD, try:

>>>boot dkb0

...if your CD-ROM is on the secondary IDE channel as mine is.

- or -

>>>boot dka0

...if it's on the primary.

-- Christian von Kleist

--
c v k @ z y b x .com

> The best I can say is what the seller told me: Adaptect SCSI Controller.
> No Model #.
>>On Tue, 10 Dec 2002, Stefan Edwards wrote:
>
>>> I have a DEC Personal Workstation Alpha 500a that I have installed
>>> NetBSD
> on.
>>> the trick is, that I cannot find the SCSI devices on the SRM console,
>>> nor
> does
>>> 'show devices' nor 'show config' shed any light onto why I cannot
>>> find the SCSIs. The only Hard Disk Devices show are two PCI IDE slots
>>> that are unoccupied. The only devices that actually show up in 'ls'
>>> are dva0.bleh, dka0.0.4.0 (CD) and ewa.bleh. Another thing is, I know
>>> the ARC console used the SCSI disks to boot NT (the guy I bought it
>>> from used NT on this
> machine).
>
>>What SCSI adapter are you running? SRM is much more restrictive than
>> ARC concerning bootable SCSI adapters.
>
>>Doc

# I love NASM and Assembly in Linux
section .data
msg db 'Hello World!',0
len equ 13
section .text
     global _start
_start:
 mov eax,4
 mov ebx,1
 mov ecx, msg
 mov edx, len
 int 0x80
 mov eax,1
 mov ebx,0
 int 0x80