--- "Aaron J. Grier" <agrier@poofygoof.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 08, 2005 at 11:19:46AM +0100, David Brownlee wrote:
> > 	Would people have a list of known SCSI controllers from which
> > 	a PCI based alpha can boot?
> 
> isn't it dependent on the BIOS they're loaded with?  IE you can have an
> ncr (isp) but if it doesn't have the DEC BIOS you're out of luck...
> 

In most cases the only difference between a DEC card and it's generic
counterpart was the DEC branding. Usually it's a matter of finding a card
with the right combination of chipset, irq, memory address, and wotnot
that SRM recognizes.

There are a couple homegrown lists of various third-party cards which have
been successfully tested on various SRM-based systems:

http://moon.hanya-n.org/comp/alpha/hct/scsi.html
http://www.pofo.de/alpha-boot/

Both list which system the card was actually tested on. The latter URL
goes as far as to list the SRM version tested.

General rule of thumb is if a card worked on an earlier system, it'll
probably work on the later systems, but not vice versa (eg. if a card
boots on a Multia, it'll probably boot on an AS255/233, but not the
reverse).

Another source would be the "Systems Options Catalog" (SOC) for a given
system. They list only the official DEC part numbers at the time, but you
might be able to use that info to find the original manufacturer and their
third-party equivalent part. I think the HP/CPQ website still has most of
the catalogs archived for historical purposes.

http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/index.html - Go down to the Retired
systems sections and drill your way down to your specific model.

--
Ed Wensell III


		
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