Mailing List Archive: updating firmware, installing gentoo on alpha, etc.

I just picked up an old alphastation 500 on ebay and I'd like to
install gentoo on it. I've read over the handbook, but I have a few
questions.

- I'd like mess around with xorg on alpha. I'm running srm 6.7-2 and
it won't post my pci radeon rv250, so for the time being I have an old
s3 virge in there. does anyone have any experience with the newer srm
(7.2) and radeon cards? I've heard arc/alphabios is better at posting
video cards. Is there any truth to that? Also I seem to recall
having read somewhere that milo or aboot will also post video cards if
srm can't. Is this true?

- How does one upgrade the srm? I've not be able to find any
particularly clear instructions anywhere. DEC/Compaq/HP's
instructions seem to be about all there are and they are pretty vague.
They all talk about some firmware/sdk cdrom that you can boot to
upgrade. I haven't been able to find such a disc anywhere. Can I
just burn the fireware update .exe and .sys files to cdrom, or is some
special preparation required?

- stage 1/2 vs 3. have much of an improvement can I expect with ev5
binaries vs ev4? is it worth the extra time to do a stage 1/2 build?

- how is 2.6.x kernel support on alpha?

Thanks!

Alex

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gentoo-alpha@gentoo.org mailing list

Hi Alex,

[...]
> - I'd like mess around with xorg on alpha. I'm running srm 6.7-2 and
> it won't post my pci radeon rv250, so for the time being I have an old
> s3 virge in there. does anyone have any experience with the newer srm
> (7.2) and radeon cards? I've heard arc/alphabios is better at posting
> video cards. Is there any truth to that? Also I seem to recall
> having read somewhere that milo or aboot will also post video cards if
> srm can't. Is this true?

I have an XLT-300 which only has Alphabios (no SRM). So far I have used it
only with an S3 768 card and a Matrox Millenium II, both worked fine, but
only if I seated the card in the first PCI slot. I have no experience with
newer video cards.

From what I've read, people who have the choice generally prefer to use
SRM, since Milo (the Alphabios boot loader) is not very well supported
anymore. I had a very hard time finding a Milo that would boot 2.4 kernels
on my XLT. I haven't been able to boot kernels above 2.4.21
(alpha-sources) at all on my XLT, even though they compile just fine.

> - stage 1/2 vs 3. have much of an improvement can I expect with ev5
> binaries vs ev4? is it worth the extra time to do a stage 1/2 build?

If I were you, I'd go for a stage 3 installation first, you can always
redo the installation after you've played with it for a while and are
confident that everything works. I did a stage 1 myself, it took many
hours...

I don't know how much improvement you'll get with ev5 over ev4. If you are
keen to get the most out of your alpha and feel adventurous, use CCC
(Compaq C Compiler):
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-alpha-compaq-tools.xml

> - how is 2.6.x kernel support on alpha?

The gentoo-dev-sources and development-sources ebuilds are marked ~alpha:
http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=gentoo-dev-sources
http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=development-sources

Unfortunately, my XLT refuses to boot any of those kernels...

Marnix.

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