No boot on AlphaServer DS25

[John Klos]

Hi, all,

It's been a few years since the magic smoke came out of a chip on the
motherboard of my only Alpha. Recently, some fine people donated an
AlphaServer DS25 which will be used for bulk pkgsrc package building and
testing. However, it seems that while systems in the same family are
supported and support is implied, the system doesn't boot either netbsd-7
or current:

http://www.ziaspace.com/~john/alphanoboot1.jpg
http://www.ziaspace.com/~john/alphanoboot2.jpg

Has anyone else run NetBSD on a DS25 with EV68CB CPUs? I tried booting
both the 6.4 firmware version that the machine came with and the upgraded
7.3 firmware and got the same results.

Ideas?

Thanks,
John

[Felix Deichmann]

Am 28.12.2015 um 18:59 schrieb John Klos:
> Has anyone else run NetBSD on a DS25 with EV68CB CPUs? I tried booting
> both the 6.4 firmware version that the machine came with and the
> upgraded 7.3 firmware and got the same results.

Did you see this thread?
https://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-alpha/2013/04/23/msg000661.html
Led to no result as it seems, unfortunately.

Felix

[Tobias Nygren]

Have you tried netboot? It is not uncommon for cd drives from that era
to either have issues reliably reading cd-rw media, mechanical failure
from old age or both.

-Tobias

[Naruaki.Etomi]

Hello.

Alpha Server DS25 and DS15(Titan family) support NetBSD 7 and current.

---
AlphaServer DS25, 1000MHz, s/n AY25202439
8192 byte page size, 1 processor.
total memory = 2048 MB
(3248 KB reserved for PROM, 2044 MB used by NetBSD)
avail memory = 2004 MB
mainbus0 (root)
cpu0 at mainbus0: ID 0 (primary), 21264C-5
cpu0: Architecture extensions: 0x1307<PAT,MVI,CIX,FIX,BWX>
tsc0 at mainbus0: 21274 Core Logic Chipset, Cchip rev 0
tsc0: 8 Dchips, 2 memory buses of 32 bytes
tsc0: arrays present: 2048MB, 0MB, 0MB, 0MB, Dchip 0 rev 1
---

ISO boot is no problem.

I will investigate it.
--
Naruaki.Etomi
nulln...@gmail.com

[Martin Husemann]

On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 07:17:21PM +0100, Tobias Nygren wrote:
> Have you tried netboot? It is not uncommon for cd drives from that era
> to either have issues reliably reading cd-rw media, mechanical failure
> from old age or both.

I can second this, try netboot (or put a scsi disk into some other machine
and dd the CD image there, just for testing).

Martin

[John Klos]

>> Has anyone else run NetBSD on a DS25 with EV68CB CPUs? I tried booting
>> both the 6.4 firmware version that the machine came with and the
>> upgraded 7.3 firmware and got the same results.
>
> Did you see this thread?
> https://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-alpha/2013/04/23/msg000661.html
> Led to no result as it seems, unfortunately.

I saw that, and that led me to updating firmware to the latest (7.3), but
got the same result.

> did you try a -6 build, or -5?

Not yet. I'll need some more blank CDs.

> Have you tried netboot? It is not uncommon for cd drives from that era
> to either have issues reliably reading cd-rw media, mechanical failure
> from old age or both.

I'll give that a try, too. I already have MOP set up for netbooting VAXen.

I also saw this thread:

https://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-kern/2015/08/02/msg019231.html

NetBSD running on DS15 and DS25 systems are discussed, so it works even if
it needs some help getting installed. Did you have to do anything special
to boot those systems, Naruaki?

John

[Naruaki.Etomi]

Dear John,

Hello!

My Alpha Server DS25 and DS15 boot on NetBSD 7.0.
https://gist.githubusercontent.com/nullnilaki/603a40c92dacd26bef34/raw/de54bf412a77444ceac03b90aba9774b4da42aee/gistfile1.txt

I don't know the cause of that problem.
Sorry.

I wonder why your screenshot print "NetBSD/alpha 7.0_STABLE ISO"
and "Boot flags:1"

http://www.ziaspace.com/~john/alphanoboot2.jpg

===============================================================

Please try it out one more time.

1.Download iso image.
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/iso/7.0/
NetBSD-7.0-alpha.iso 276768 KB 15/09/25 8:24:00

2.Write image file to disc.

3.Turns on DS25.

4.Insert cd into Alpha server DS25.

5.Please type following command at the SRM.
P00>>>set boot_osflags A
P00>>>set boot_file
P00>>>boot dqa0

6.Please let me know the result.

7.Please tell me the result of show command at the SRM.
--------------------------------
P00>>>show
auto_action HALT
boot_dev dqa0.0.0.16.0
boot_file
boot_osflags A
boot_reset ON
bootbios
bootdef_dev dga1.1002.0.2.1 dgb1.1004.0.2.3 dga1.1001.0.2.1 dgb1.1003.0.2.3
booted_dev dqa0.0.0.16.0
booted_file
booted_osflags A
char_set 0
com1_baud 9600
com1_flow SOFTWARE
..
--------------------------------

===============================================================

GOOD LUCK!!
https://twitter.com/nullnilaki/status/681822566789414913?lang=ja

--
Naruaki Etomi
nulln...@gmail.com

[Michael Kronsteiner]

it often helps to clean the lens of a cd/dvd drive with a q-tip and isopropanol. my "not-even-single-speed" old dec drives still reads burnt cds very well. optical drives need "a little love" about every 2 years

 

Gesendet: Montag, 28. Dezember 2015 um 19:50 Uhr
Von: "John Klos" <jo...@ziaspace.com>
An: nulln...@gmail.com
Cc: port-...@netbsd.org
Betreff: Re: No boot on AlphaServer DS25

[Miod Vallat]

> It's been a few years since the magic smoke came out of a chip on the
> motherboard of my only Alpha. Recently, some fine people donated an
> AlphaServer DS25 which will be used for bulk pkgsrc package building and
> testing. However, it seems that while systems in the same family are
> supported and support is implied, the system doesn't boot either netbsd-7
> or current:

The boot fails for two reasons:
1. the NetBSD boot loader does not check that the area where it will
load the kernel is not already claimed by the SRM. Eventually, it
loads part of the kernel image over SRM data and/or stack, which does
not end well.
2. the NetBSD kernel is not linked at a high enough address to work with
that particular SRM. For some reason, Naruaki Etomi's system runs a
particular SRM version which does not require as much memory as other
DS25 systems. His dmesg reports

(3248 KB reserved for PROM, 2044 MB used by NetBSD)

but the DS25 here reserves 5304 KB for the SRM itself.

[Miod Vallat]

> Figuring newer firmware needs more space for SRM, I updated
> stand/Makefile.bootprogs:
>
> STANDPROG_LOAD_ADDRESS= 0xfffffc0000300000
> to
> STANDPROG_LOAD_ADDRESS= 0xfffffc0000800000

[...]

> And rebooted using the new netboot file. However, this didn't work. I saw
> mention of the "Alpha AXP Architecture Reference Manual" which may explain
> what needs to be done, but I do not have that.

But STANDPROG_LOAD_ADDRESS only afffects sys/arch/alpha/stand/standtest.

You want to change TEXTADDR in sys/arch/alpha/conf/Makefile.alpha; and
while you're here, do yourself a favor and update KERNBASE in
<machine/param.h> accordingly (yes, it's been out of sync for years).