[rescue] Appropriate OS for Alpha?

[Chris Petersen]

On Mon, Jul 22, 2002 at 01:05:15PM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:
> On July 22, Chris Petersen wrote:
> > NetBSD is definetely a good route to look at, and is something I'll probably
> > start evaluating for my home use.  That said, *don't* expect that just
> > because you're running NetBSD or Linux you'll be home free on hardware
> > support.  I've found a couple of things to be true:
> > 
> > 1) Assuming that just because it's supported in a given x86 variant doesn't
> > mean it'll be supported in a non-x86 variant
> 
>   Hmph.  Well, I've run a BIG HONKING PILE of different kinds of
> hardware under NetBSD/alpha on literally dozens of different Alpha
> systems (admittedly mostly PCI machines) for a very long time, and
> have never managed to get my hands on anything that wasn't supported
> or was supposedly supported but didn't work.  Ever.
> 
>   No, I take that back.  I have an HP-IB controller and an obscure
> Compaq RAID controller that aren't supported.  But that's it.
> 

That's reassuring to hear.  And not suprising for NetBSD, I suppose.  I know
it never seemed to be the case with Linux, but then again I gave up on it a
while ago :)

As for NetBSD, I never really have played much with it.  A couple of us
tried to get NetBSD (forget rev) up and running on pmaxes back in '97, and
it was so ugly, I guess I kind of shut that part of my brain off for a bit
:)  Besides, being in a position finally where I had ready access to just
about every commercial Unix I wanted to play with available changed my
priorities for a while.  Now the suits have caught up with me and I think
it's back to the open source OS world yet again...

> > 2) If you're using SRM as your boot console, you'll be amazed at the
> > hardware it'll get in the way of using...Heck, I couldn't even get a DEC
> > ZLXp-L1 PCI framebuffer to work in a 600au, which is only slightly newer
> > then the machines that used that card...
> 
>   I agree that this can be a big problem.  Clearly the folks responsible
> for developing SRM have a certain lack of real-world clue.
> 

Definetely.  On the other hand, back in the DEC days one of my admin buddies
had a 400a that he was trying to convert over.  It had a ZLXp-L3, the big
brother to that L1 I tried to get working.  When the SRM puked on him, he
emailed the firmware Q&A address and actually got a firmware guy to cut him
a custom firmware with that particular device signature enabled.  Apparently
they maintained a table of device signatures in the PROM that were "OK" for
a given class of hardware.  Predominantly they only supported the options
that were current for that hardware's lifespan, even if other alternatives
worked.  When I tried to get this same level of support a few years later so
I could get OpenVMS running on the 600au I mentioned, they essentially
laughed at me.   This was post-Digital days.  Weird.  

Of course, those who know OpenVMS can guess why I'd want to get a ZLXp-L1
card running in a 600au...

Chris

-- 
Chris Petersen			  E-mail: havoc at apk.net
Systems Engineer, ExperTeam Services, EDS PLM Solutions