ac1-qboot.iso testing (Was: Re: AC 0.9 boot problem)

[Jay Estabrook]

Thanks to Sergey and Cristian, the ISO image "ac1-qboot.iso" was made
available for anon FTP at ftp.rdsor.ro:

    /pub/Linux/Distributions/AlphaLinux/core/1.0a/test

Its purpose is to allow testing of the installation boot scripts 
and check on kernel support for the various Alpha platforms.

!!! IT IS NOT A COMPLETE DISTRO YET !!!

It is ONLY for testing, so don't download it with any other intention...


On Tue, Apr 05, 2005 at 02:37:52PM +0400, Sergey Tikhonov wrote:
>
> I will put Alpha Server 4100 to my list of machines that 
> could have possibility to install AC 1.0.

Here are a few other results of using that "ac1-qboot.iso" image for
testing bootability of various Alphas to which I have access. I simply
booted into "rescue text" mode and poked around a bit (doing an "ls -R"
of a previous install, looking at /proc/cpuinfo).

Platform	Result
--------	------

DP264		OK
DS10		OK
XP1000		OK

AS400		BAD??

AS500		OK
AS600		OK
AS600A		OK
AS800		OK
AS1200		OK
AS4100		OK

PC164		OK
LX164		OK
MIATA		OK

AS2100		BAD??

AS1000A		BAD	kernel messages stop after "Serial: 8250/16550..."
XLT (MILO)	BAD	kernel messages stop after "Serial: 8250/16550..."


Notes:
------

1. The current install kernel will NOT boot on the TITAN-based machines
   (DS15/DS25/ES45), nor on WILDFIRE or MARVEL, because it is still
   consfigured for LEGACY_START_ADDRESS.

2. A number of platforms with CDROM located off an NCR 810 had some
   sort of trouble, either unable to find a CDROM device (indicating the
   driver failed to probe correctly), or some sort of generic hang
   (as on the AS2100 and AS400). This may be a problem with the driver,
   which appears to always be "sym53c8xx"; in previous distros, there
   was an "ncr53c8xx" which appeared to be the one preferred (by the
   distro) for the "lower" NCR adapters (810/815/875?).

3. The problem encountered on XLT and AS1000A appears generic, ie it
   occurs with "vanilla" 2.6.11 as well... :-(

 --Jay++

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Jay A Estabrook                            HPTC - LINUX support
Hewlett-Packard Company - ZKO2-3/N30       (603) 884-0301
110 Spit Brook Road, Nashua NH 03062       Jay.Estabrook at hp.com
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