Subject: Re: Could run NetBSD 3.x or 4.0 on AlphaServer 2100 ?
To: None <port-alpha@netbsd.org>
From: Michael L. Hitch <mhitch@lightning.msu.montana.edu>
List: port-alpha
Date: 04/13/2007 11:36:20
On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, Gianluca Bonetti wrote:

> I was sure that the booting procedure was good since I used many times on 
> AS4100s so I looked around and found that AS2100 is not on the list of 
> supported models for NetBSD.
> I did a mistake because once I spotted AS2100 on FreeBSD list and got 
> confused my memory :)
>
> More specifically, when booting 4.0 here is the console output for 
> uniprocessor kernel:
...
> My question is whether is it possible to run a version of NetBSD on a SMP 
> configured AS2100.
>
> I got some confusing information by google search.
> It seems that AS2100 is not officially supported but someone got it to boot 
> at least with older kernel.
>
> Maybe someone got a custom build of the kernel to boot on the machine and 
> could gently provide me a config file for rebuild on another machine (or a 
> binary build).
>
> I will be very happy to help in testing on AS2100 (and debugging, if possible 
> to my skills)
>
> Any help or information would be appreciated.

   I still have the console log file from when I attempted to boot a 2100A,
and it halted at the same point.  It also seemed to have trouble 
recovering after that, but I didn't proceed any further at the time.

   I also remember trying to boot a 2100, and running into the problem of 
it not recognizing that there was a vga console, and I didn't have 
anything handy at the time for a serial console.  The 2100A was booted 
with a serial console.

   Someday I want to dig either the 2100A or 2100 out and try debugging it. 
I suspect it will take sprinkling lots of printfs through the code to 
figure out where it's failing.

--
Michael L. Hitch			mhitch@montana.edu
Computer Consultant
Information Technology Center
Montana State University	Bozeman, MT	USA