Micronics W6-Li motherboard
dual 200MHz PPro
128mb RAM
DPT 2044W SCSI
Matrox Mill2 video
PCI NE2000 clone
This system has been networked with an AlphaStation 200 4/233 running
OpenBSD for about 7 days.
I've maintained a reasonable load on the system all day and continued to use
it for all my normal work. Its been doing NFS transfers to and from
the Alpha, and its the Alpha's network gateway.
I'm using ipchains to firewall and do masquerading from my private network
via PPP.
Its handled everything I've done for two weeks, with one glaring exception:
T H E T A P E D R I V E
The SCSI tape driver is broken still.
Any error, of any kind, and I can no longer access the tape drive. The
error I get is that the device is not configured.
I compiled st.o as a module, and reloading it fixes things until
the next error.
Today for example, I tried to run:
% mt setblk 10
...hitting return too quickly. The tape was gone after that.
After reloading st.o I started extracting an 800mb tarfile. It got
something like 650mb of files extracted before failing with read
errors.
After that, the tape drive was once again inaccessible until the driver
was reloaded.
I don't see much mention of the tape driver... though Linus sent
me and Molnar Ingo a note about it needing some work.
The tape drive is a fast SCSI-2 4mm, DDS2 autochanger. It runs
perfectly with 2.0.33 but has never functioned properly under any
2.1 kernel.
Otherwise I'm starting to have a lot of luck with the 2.1 kernels.
Another issue: DEC Alpha booting and kernels for Linux
OpenBSD and NetBSD both install painlessly and flawlessly on my
DEC AlphaStation 200 4/233.
The whole Linux/MILO thing is broken all over the place. I have
access to three AlphaStation 200's, and they all react differently
to each MILO/kernel combination I have tried. The same MILO will not
boot on all three, even though they are almost identical machines.
I am wondering if this is going to be addressed and if it's a kernel
issue or something about MILO that causes this. Does anyone know
for sure? It seems like there are many questions and few answers
about getting Linux on various AlphaStations.
I have heard that the problem is Linux not using the Digital UNIX
palcode on the system whereas that is what the BSD's are doing to
get booted.
-- csh - shendrix@widomaker.com - http://www.widomaker.com - Will Hack 4 F00D ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books For to you kingdoms and their armies are mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment to be overturned by the flicking of a finger." - anonymous- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu