[OpenBIOS] Aladdin V chipset

[(Dave Jones)]

Ronald G. Minnich <rminnich at lanl.gov> wrote:
 > > > when you say super socket 7 chipsets -- does this include AMD?
 > > > edwin
 > > I meant "Super Socket 7 boards" in general -- ie: the Asus P5 series, Acer
 > > boards (obviously), etc...  When I say "Aladdin V Chipset", I am referring
 > 
 > OK, this brings up an interesting issue for the OpenBIOS community. At
 > least one Socket 7 motherboard will support either alpha or pentium in the
 > socket. So it's the same motherboard with a different processor. All
 > startup tasks for the motherboard are pretty much the same.

*shock*
Really ? I thought Alphas only ran on their own custom buses (EV etc...)


 > I had an interesting set of discussions with vendors at extreme linux last
 > week. There's a lot of interest in linuxbios -- from Alpha motherboards
 > too (the alpha bios'es all have sucked very badly -- dec never got it
 > right). 

Hmm, fine hardware, not so good software.
Seems true of a quite a few vendors these days.

 > As things stand openbios is too pentium-specific. So I'd like to propose
 > an idea. 
 > so we change the layout a bit. It's still early in the game, we can do
 > this. 
 > A possible layout:
 > bios/arch/i386/{poweron.s,protected_mode.s,memory.s,motherboard.c,boot.c}
 > bios/arch/alpha/{poweron.s,protected_mode.s,memory.s,motherboard.c,boot.c}
 > bios/payload/{your c files here}

That seems quite logical.

 > If we do this, we're not just for pentiums any more. That would be
 > wonderful! Any interest?

Seems quite a good idea.
Finding someone with an Alpha to test things on would be a first step
though I suppose. That, and finding someone who knows the Alpha architecture.

regards,

-- 
Dave.
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