Re: Having some odd issues booting anything on my axp164UX
On Tue, Aug 28, 2007 at 02:37:23PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> I got a pair of axp164UX machines, which I am now trying to get debian
> installed onto.
>
> Of course they use ARCS rather than SRM, so installing is going to be
> non trivial (I also got a Multia with SRM which boots the install CD
> just fine, except the TGA console shows nothing, and when booted with a
> serial console it dies with out of memory, which I guess is reasonable
> with 32MB ram in the system).
>
> Now supposedly woody works on the 164UX and supports installing with
> milo. I grabbed the ruffian milo disk, put it on a floppy, booted it,
> and then tried to get it to load the rescue disk next, but milo simply
> gives an error about being unable to determine the filesystem on the
> floppy (and spits on a line of text that looks a lot like the FAT12
> header that would be on the rescue disk). I have tried multiple
> floppies, I tried a different floppy drive, I tried other versions of
> milo I found after much searching, and so far nothing works. As soon as
> milo is loaded, it no longer has a clue how to read from the floppy
> (even gives io errors every once in a while). Directory listings of a
> FAT16 drive on hda1 work just fine.
>
> As another experiment I tried putting milo and the install kernel and
> initrd for etch onto the fat partition (by putting the drive in a PC)
> and then booting that, but it seems milo has no idea how to load an
> initrd, or at least not the one from etch so that didn't seem to work
> either. I guess I should try putting the woody kernel onto the HD, but
> then I have no idea what to do about rescue, root and drivers1/2.
> Should I extract the drivers tgz onto the hd as well along with the
> contents of the root disk onto a small ext2 partition and then point
> milo at the woody install kernel and the small ext2 partition?
>
> I found a page that says that etch should still run on a machine booted
> with milo as long as you have your own way of getting milo on there and
> configured, so I figure there is still hope here. With a 600MHz 21164A
> and 128MB ram (which I will probably upgrade to 512MB if I get it
> working), it seems like it should be at least a decent alpha box to play
> with.
>
> So any ideas? Does it seem the floppy controller is broken on this
> machine or is there some configuration setting in the ARCS BIOS I have
> to fiddle with to make this thing boot?
Well on a high note, I managed to boot a Miata 433 MHz with 256MB ram,
after upgrading the firmware to the latest version and switching it to
SRM. As soon as I get a working HD in it I will get Etch going on it.
Does anyone know if I could move a 600MHz 21164A into the Miata in place
of the 433MHz 21164?
--
Len Sorensen
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