XL-266 install

[Donsbach, Jeff]

Hi Trevor,

I am in a similar position as you with an XL366, another of the "white
box" systems designed for NT only. All those systems require MILO for
the Linux boot loader as there is no SRM console firmware available for
those systems. 

The "4/xxx" and "5/xxx" names refered to whether the model was an EV4 or
an EV5 chip as the CPU. The XL/233 and 266 were EV4 (well, EV45
actually). The XL/300, 366 and 433 (sometimes called XLT systems) were
EV5 (the 300 was an EV5 while the 366 and 433 were EV56).

One of the best places to grab MILO and linload are actually from the
Debian mirrors, such as here -
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/disks-alpha/current/MILO/ 

You can either

1) Grab the files "linload.exe" and "xl" and copy them to a floppy.
However, you need to rename "xl" to "milo.exe" .
2) Grab milo_xl.bin and write it to a floppy from Windows using
"rawrite" or similar, or on another Linux system, use the "dd" command
to write the image to a floppy.

I don't remember; does the XL/266 have AlphaBios, or did it still have
the old "ARC" console? In either case, you will need to set up an OS
boot menu entry to boot "linload.exe" from the floppy. The details on
how to do that are similar for either console but I don't know that I
remember enough of what it looked like to guide you through it.

Once in MILO, you would then enter a second boot command to boot the
Linux kernel from the CD and start the installation.

Your existing disks probably have a small "FAT" partition (10 Meg or
less) on one of them that was required to boot NT and Win2K from. You
can leave that there if you want and copy linload.exe and milo.exe to
that partition and have the console boot from there so that you won't
need to keep the floppy to boot from.

Jeff D

-----Original Message-----
From: axp-list-admin at redhat.com [mailto:axp-list-admin at redhat.com] On
Behalf Of trevor
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 12:53 PM
To: axp-list at redhat.com
Subject: XL-266 install


While rumaging through the old hardware pile at work, to my pleasant
surprise 
I came across an Alpha XL-266 and would like to get Linux running on it.

I booted up the machine. Someone had, at one point, installed both
Windows 
2000 and Windows NT4 but I am not able to boot either of these; in both
cases 
they start to boot but then fail complaining about missing DLLs and so
on.

I found the alphalinux.org site and tried to figure out how to get Linux
on 
this machine but I wasn't successful so I'm hoping to catch some kind
person 
here who might help.

After a few false starts it is my understanding that the only firmware I
can 
use on this machine is the Windows NT ARC firmware, in other words, the 
option of using SRM doesn't exist for me. [One point of confusion for me
so 
far: the documents say there are only 2 types of firmware, SRM and
AlphaBIOS, 
so what is Windows NT ARC firmware and how does that fit in?]

I went to the "Alpha Systems Firmware" site 
[http://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/Alpha/firmware] and upgraded to the
latest 
firmware for this machine model 4/xxx (which I believe is version 4.7x
or 
something like that). That firmware download site mentioned something
about 
AlphaXL Model 4/xxx and Model 5/xxx which is again confusing because I
don't 
see anything anywhere on this machine to suggest model 4/xxx or model
5/xxx.

Based on what I've found out so far I'll need to use MILO to boot, so I
tried 
to follow the MILO Miniloader HOWTO. I can't seem to find anywhere where
I 
can find the required "linload.exe" file. Every link I find leads to
sites 
that don't exist anymore. I'm not out of luck, am I?

I was able to find an XL-specific Milo image at 
[ftp://genie.ucd.ie/pub/alpha/milo], but all the other links from the
"Alpha 
Miniloader HOWTO" are dead.

My current understanding is that I need to format a floppy (FAT) and
copy both 
the XL-specific MILO and linload.exe onto it. But what after that I'm
not 
sure. I've followed the instructions in the HOWTO to setup a Linux
bootloader 
option in the firmware (so the menu item is ready to go) but as for
getting 
the components for the floppy, what to do with them (is just copying
them to 
the floppy sufficient?) and what else I need to do are still fuzzy.

Does MILO get installed to the system anywhere, or do I always need the
floppy 
to boot?

I'm hoping someone can clarify these things for me.

Thank you for any and all help, and best regards,
	Trevor