Re: Crippled Alpha chips?

["J. Joseph Max Katz" <jkatz@cpio.org>]

I'm not a DEC employee, but this is what comes to mind....

1) What disk are you using to try and get the console to do SRM?

2) The control for the boot programs isn't done in the chip, but
in the EEPROM/Boot Rom (whatever you want to call it.) On each
Alpha model, these chips vary. Make sure you are using the right
program/disk to update your firmware to the right REV of SRM.

  -Jon	   College Sophomore   *   OpenBSD Enthusiast   *   T. Sax
  -  Founder and President, Corinne Posse * http://posse.cpio.org  - 
  jkatz@cpio.org   *   http://www.cpio.org   *   http://jon.katz.com
  "OpenBSD: high performance computing for high performance people."

On Tue, 15 Jul 1997, G. Scott Lloyd wrote:

:
:I've put together a new system consisting of a AlphaPC 164 motherboard
:and a 21164-P7 CPU (500 MHz for NT) with the intent of running *BSD. The
:system will not even boot the SRM console. I tried another 21164-P7 chip
:and it behaves the same (no boot SRM). The P7 chips boot the ARC console
:and run NT just fine. If I plug in a 21164-P6 (433 MHz), the SRM console
:boots fine. Apparently DEC has followed through with crippling the NT
:versions of the Alpha chips starting with P7 so that you can't run digital
:UNIX (and apparently the SRM console which is of interest here) without
:spending a few thousand dollars more for the UNIX version of the chips?
:Is this true? What other issues are involved here?
:
:Without a working  SRM console from DEC, are there any alternative
:consoles that can boot *BSD, or are there plans to make or adapt a
:console (like the Linux lilo) to *BSD ?
:
:--Scott
: