Re: Can 164SX with AlphaBIOS boot from network?

["Donald White" <dbwhite asu edu>]

Jay Estabrook wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Feb 12, 2002 at 05:08:28PM -0700, Donald White wrote:
> >
> > Yes, of course, I don't have a real boot file, but you suspected that.
> > I just gave it a name to see what would happen as I could find no
> > documentation, a bit of experimental computer science.  I am working on
> > a research OS called Sombrero.  See http://www.eas.asu.edu/~sasos.  I am
> > looking for a way to load an AlphaBIOS application over the network
> > rather than from the run maintenance program menu selection.
> >
> > Does AlphaBIOS provide an API to the NIC?  The ADK shows one for the
> > SCSI adapter.  I was hoping to develop some AlphaBIOS applications to do
> > prototyping for future Sombrero device drivers.
> 
> I think that the netboot capability of AlphaBIOS was never intended
> for generic applications.
> 
> At one time, I got a buddy to hack up an AlphaBIOS that could netboot
> MILO; it was tricky because you are really netbooting 2 things, ie the
> pre-booter and then MILO, and the normal console behavior is to close
> the NIC interface after the first image comes across.
> 
> Is there any reason you are avoiding the use of SRM?
> 

It wasn't my decision to make.  The development started using NT and the
current bootloader is a modified linload.exe.  Anyway, if it shouldn't
work, I will stop.

Thanks,

Don