Unfortunately this is not a perfect world and there, as always, some restrictions that you should be aware of.
The Miniloader is not meant to load operating systems other than Linux, although it can load images linked to run at the same place in memory as Linux which is 0xFFFFFC0000310000). This is how the flash update utilities can be run.
The PALcode sources included in miniboot/palcode/blah are
correct, however there are problems when they are built using the
latest gas. They do build if you use the ancient a.out gas
that's supplied in the Alpha Evaluation Board toolset (and that's how
they were built). I'm trying to get someone to fix the new gas.
Meanwhile, as a workaround, I've provided pre-built PALcode for the
supported boards.
I've not yet written/tested the flash update stuff for the EB66+ and AlphaPC64, but I have given instructions on how to load the miniloader into flash on those systems using the Alpha Evaluation Board Debug Monitor which ships with those systems.
Several people reported having problems reading files from the
floppy disk using the Evaluation Board Debug Monitor supplied with
Digital Alpha Evaluation Boards such as the AlphaPC64. Usually, the
Debug Monitor can load the first few sectors all right, but then goes
into an endless loop complaining about "bad sectors." Apparently,
there is an incompatibility between the DOS file system as expected by
the Debug Monitor and the Linux implementation of DOSFS. To make the
long story short: if you run into this problem, try using DOS to write
the floppy disk. For example, if loading the file milo.cab
doesn't work, use a DOS machine, insert the floppy and then do:
copy a:milo.cab c:
copy c:milo.cab a:
del c:milo.cab
Then try booting from that floppy again. This normally solves the problem.
The x86 emulator that Miniloader uses to execute the BIOS initialization code found on graphics cards is basically an 8086 emulator with just enough 386 support to get some of the graphics cards initialized. At present, the following cards are known to work:
bus card type: chip: BIOS version: Note:
--- --------------------------- ------ --------------------------- -----
ISA #9 GXE Level 12 S3 928 #9GXE BIOS Version 1.13.03S
PCI #9 GXE 64 PCI S3 864 #9-864 BIOS Version 1.02.09u
PCI Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM PCI S3 864 BIOS Version 1.14 1
PCI Diamond Video 64 DRAM PCI S3 868 BIOS Version 1.02 1
Notes:
------
#1: Reported by pgwduane@mail.atnet.net.
Cards that are currently known not to work:
bus card type: chip: BIOS version: Note:
--- --------------------------- ------ --------------------------- -----
PCI ATI Graphics Pro Turbo ??? ??? 1
Notes:
------
#1: Reported by cruff@niwot.scd.ucar.EDU.
If you know of any other graphics cards that work, please report your result to davidm@azstarnet.com . If your card doesn't work, you may want to report this also but there no guarantee that the problem will be fixed quickly.
A word of warning: if you do try using MILO with the x86 emulator enabled and it doesn't work with the graphics card in your system, it may damage your monitor. Thus, please be careful before doing this on a system with an untested graphics card.
Next Chapter, Previous Chapter
Table of contents of this chapter, General table of contents
Top of the document, Beginning of this Chapter