Alpha XLT, MILO and PCI IDE

[AlecV]

Hi!

I'm trying to install Linux on the old Alpha XLT 300 machine.
Unfortunately, I have only old small 0.5Gb SCSI disk (wondered
how difficult to find 50-pin SCSI now).

My plan is to use SCSI disk as boot-only device to store MILO
and to use a PCI IDE controller with rather modern and large HDD
(about 20-40Gb) for Linux.

I've formatted SCSI disk as FAT16 uder i386 machime and copied
MILO on it.

MILO is from the Debian 30r5 - seems a latest linux supporting MILO.
The MILO version is 2.2.18

MILO booting OK, I have a MILO prompt.

There is serious issue with PCI IDE controllers. I have bunch of them:
The VIA and ITE are visiable as PCI RAID devices and MILO 2.2.18
does not reconize them at all. I can see it with 'pci' command but
can't
use it.

The next controller is 'Asus PCI Ultra-66C' based on the CMD648
chipset.
MILO recognizes it as PCI IDE but hangs forewer trying to read IDE ID.

The next device is a HPT 370 IDE. MILO recognizes it, reads IDE ID
but produces alot of "timeout" errors and can't read partition table
and 'hde1' is not available.

My IDE HDDs are working, I've tested it on the i386 (I tried IBM, WD
and Seagate disks, large and small).

Any suggestions ? Can anyone point out where to dig ?

--
-=AV=-

[Dennis Grevenstein]

AlecV <alexande...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm trying to install Linux on the old Alpha XLT 300 machine.
> Unfortunately, I have only old small 0.5Gb SCSI disk (wondered
> how difficult to find 50-pin SCSI now).

You could also try a more modern SCSI disk with an adapter.
SCA SCSI disks can easily be connected to 50pin SCSI.

Dennis

--
Don't suffer from insanity...
Enjoy every minute of it.

[AlecV]

On 14 янв, 05:42, Dennis Grevenstein <dennis.grevenst...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> You could also try a more modern SCSI disk with an adapter.
> SCA SCSI disks can easily be connected to 50pin SCSI.

Unfortunately, modern SCA drives support LVD 160/320 only and
will be damaged on the 5V SCSI.

There were some SCA drives with autosensing interface for LVD/HVD
(some Barracudas AFAIK) which will work with 50-to-SCA
but such drives are hard to find too...

--
-=AV=-

[Dennis Grevenstein]

AlecV <alexande...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Unfortunately, modern SCA drives support LVD 160/320 only and
> will be damaged on the 5V SCSI.

I have used tons of SCA drives with adapters on 50pin SCSI buses.
Use something like this:
http://cgi.ebay.de/SCSI-Adapter-SCA-Festplatte-80-50-p-SCSI-Controller-/220585477509

The general problem is that modern SCSI disks expect a 16bit SCSI
bus while 50pin SCSI is 8bit. Some adapters don't terminate
correctly which can cause problems.

> There were some SCA drives with autosensing interface for LVD/HVD
> (some Barracudas AFAIK) which will work with 50-to-SCA
> but such drives are hard to find too...

50pin SCSI is not HVD and neither are almost all SCA disks.

[AlecV]

I've found Promise Ultra 66 PCI IDE card which works with Alpha XLT /
MILO.
At least MILO recongnizes IDE CD-ROM and HDD and reads partition
table,
however MILO _can't_ boot kernel from this IDE devices: the 'hde1'
nor 'hdg' (CDROM) names are not available from the MILO CLI.
The 'show' command sees this devices.
Seems, MILO does not install these names into internal devicve table.

As a result the only way is to load Linux kernel from the slow SCSI
HDD.

--
-=AV=-

[AlecV]

On 19 янв, 14:24, AlecV <alexander.voro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>MILO _can't_ boot kernel from this IDE devices: the 'hde1'
> nor 'hdg' (CDROM) names are not available from the MILO CLI.
> The 'show' command sees this devices.
> Seems, MILO does not install these names into internal devicve table.

milo-2.2.18 defines this in the boot.c :
==============
static char *devnames[] = {
"hda", "hdb", "hdc", "hdd",
"sda", "sdb", "sdc", "sdd", "sde",
"fd", "xda", "xdb", "sr", "scd",
"sdf", "sdg", "sdh",
"floppy", "cdrom", NULL
};

static unsigned int devnums[] = {
0x300, 0x340, 0x1600, 0x1640,
0x800, 0x810, 0x820, 0x830, 0x840,
0x200, 0xD00, 0xD40, 0x0B00, 0x0B00,
0x850, 0x860, 0x870,
0x200, 0x0B00, 0x0
};

Unfortunately, modern GCCs can't compile an ancient
binutils 2.11 :(

--
-=AV=-

[AlecV]

To compile an old binutils-2.11 with new compilers:

--- bfd/coff-alpha.c.ORIG 2011-08-04 16:10:49.832078640 +0400
+++ bfd/coff-alpha.c 2011-08-04 16:11:18.891079492 +0400
@@ -1454,7 +1454,7 @@
lita_sec_data = ((struct ecoff_section_tdata *)
bfd_zalloc (input_bfd,
sizeof (struct ecoff_section_tdata)));
- ecoff_section_data (input_bfd, lita_sec) = lita_sec_data;
+ lita_sec->used_by_bfd = lita_sec_data;
}

if (lita_sec_data->gp != 0)