Installing OpenBSD on AlphaStation 500

[Sven Dietrich <spock@sled.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

Hi,

  I would like to relate the installation problems I have had
with the AS500 and OpenBSD 2.5 (and 2.4).

- Variant 1
  Booting from floppy with the floppy25.fs (and 24) image,
either the system freezes (it seems to be time-related, not
anywhere particular in the installation program), or the
installer does not see the SCSI disks at all.
- Variant 2
  Booting from a hard disk (floppy25.fs dd'ed to a SCSI disk)
freezes even earlier in the process.

The AS500 in question has mostly DEC hardware, but switching to
different non-DEC video cards for example does not alleviate
any problems. Hardware config: 128MB RAM, SCSI disk 0 (Digital
Unix), and SCSI disk 1 (OpenBSD?!?), floppy drive, ZLXp-E2 video
(although I tried Trident and Matrox PCI cards).
Firmware is 6.8.3 (SRM?), but I have not tried 6.9 or 7.0 from
the v5.4 series since DEC recommends against it. PALcode is
1.20.

Success with OpenBSD: none so far. 
Success with NetBSD: installation was successful, although it
seems a bit flaky. I was able to compile programs, but X did not
work.


-- 
Dr. Sven Dietrich        Raytheon ITSS  | spock@sled.gsfc.nasa.gov 
ESDIS Project, Code 586, Blg 32 Rm N231 | 301-614-5119 | 614-5270 Fax
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center        | Greenbelt, MD 20771