How you do this depends on what system you are trying to load. Generally, it is a two step process. First load and test the Miniloader, then program the Miniloader into flash. There are several ways of loading the Miniloader, from boot block floppy, from the WNT ARC firmware, from an Alpha Evaluation Board Debug Monitor and from flash or ROM. Which of these methods is supported and how you do it largely depends on what system you're running.
The Noname board has a failsafe load from boot block floppy option and so this is the way that you can initially load the Miniloader. If you wish, you can blow the Miniloader's image into flash but be warned that once you have done this you will lose the previous image held there as there is only room for one image.
If you do not have a standard Miniloader image, then you may need to build an SRM boot block floppy. Once you have built the Miniloader , you need to do the following on Digital Unix box:
fddisk -fmt /dev/rfd0a
cat mboot bootm > /dev/rfd0a
disklabel -rw rfd0a 'rx23' mboot bootm
Or on a Linux box:
cat mboot bootm > /dev/fd0
If you have a standard Miniloader image available (say mini.bios.dd)
then you would build a boot block floppy using the following command:
dd if=mini.bios.dd of=/dev/fd0
As well as the boot block floppy you will need the following:
The way that Noname boots is controlled by a set of jumpers on the board, j29 and j28. These look like:
4
J29 2 x x x 6
1 x x x 5
J28 2 x x x 6
1 x x x 5
3
The two options that we're interested in are J28, pins 1-3 which boots the console/loader from flash and J29, pins 1-3 which boots the console/loader from a boot block floppy. The second option is the one that you need to first boot the Miniloader on the Noname board.
Once you've selected the boot from floppy option via the jumpers, put the SRM boot block floppy containing the Miniloader into the floppy and reboot. In a few seconds (after the floppy light goes out) you should see the screen blank to white and the Miniloader telling you what's going on.
If you are really interested in technical stuff, the Noname loads images off of the floppy into physical address 0x104000 and images from flash into 0x100000. For this reason, the Miniloader is built with it's PALcode starting at 0x200000. When it is first loaded, it moves itself to the correct location (see relocate.S).
If you want to blow a Miniloader into flash (and be careful here,
you may want to keep the current image unsullied), then you'll need an
ext2 formatted floppy containing the updateflash program. This (like
vmlinux) can be gzip'd. You need to run this program from the
Miniloader using the (>run) command:
MILO> run fd0:updateflash.gz
Wait until it has completed before powering off your system.
Make sure that it is running the Debug Monitor. These systems have
two boot images in flash controlled by jumpers. I usually wire the
jumper to the turbo switch (who needs a turbo switch when you have an
Alpha?). The Debug Monitor can load an image either via the network
(netboot) or via a floppy (flboot). In either case, set the boot
address to 0x200000 (> bootadr 200000) before booting the
image.
If the image is on floppy (and note that only DOS formatted floppies are supported), then you will need to type the following command:
AlphaPC64> flboot <Miniloader-image-name>
I suggest that you always try this first before attempting to update the flash ROM. Make sure that it's running the Debug Monitor:
You want jumper 7 out, as the first image is the Debug Monitor and that's what you need to run. Bit 6 should be out also, otherwise you'll boot the SROM minidebugger.
Then follow the instructions for the EB66+, the boot address is 0x200000.
First get the Debug Monitor running. Then make yourself a flashable image using the makerom tool in the Debug Monitor software that comes with the board:
> makerom -v -i7 -l200000 miniloader -o mini.flash
(type makerom to find out what the arguments mean, but 7 is a flash image id used by the srom and -l200000 gives the load address for the image as 0x200000).
Load that image into memory (via the Debug Monitor commands flload, netload, and so on) at 0x200000.
Blow the image into flash:
AlphaPC64> flash 200000 8
(200000 is where the image to be blown is in memory and 8 is the segment number where you put the image. There are 16 1024*64 byte segments in the flash and the Debug Monitor is at seg 0 and the WNT ARC console is at seg 4).
Set up the image that the srom will boot by writing the number of the image into the TOY clock.
AlphaPC64> bootopt 131
(131 means boot the 3rd image, 129 = 1st, 130 = 2nd and so on).
Power off, put jumper 7 on and power on and you should see the Miniloader burst into life. If you don't then take jumper 7 back off and reboot the Debug Monitor.
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