[gentoo-alpha] updating firmware, installing gentoo on alpha, etc.

[gentoo-alpha] updating firmware, installing gentoo on alpha, etc.

[Alex Deucher]

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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Re: [gentoo-alpha] updating firmware, installing gentoo on alpha, etc.

[Marnix Arnold]

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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