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Yes, there are a set of unsupported images that permit specific OpenVMS Alpha versions to bootstrap on the Multia UDB system. These images and the associated instructions are available at the OpenVMS Freeware website:
Look in the Freeware V5.0 /multia/ directory.Instructions are included IN the kits. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS. PLEASE!
Some of the restrictions involved when running OpenVMS on the Multia system include (but may well not be limited to) the following:
The Multia images are not included on the OpenVMS Freeware V4.0 CD-ROM kit, the kit that was distributed with OpenVMS V7.2. (These images became available after Freeware V4.0 shipped.)
Other sources of information for OpenVMS on Multia include:
OpenVMS Alpha is not supported on the AlphaPC 164LX and 164SX series, though there are folks that have gotten certain of the LX series to load SRM and bootstrap OpenVMS. (The Aspen Durango II variant, specifically.)
One problem has been generally reported: ATA (IDE) bootstraps will fail; SCSI storage and a SCSI CD-ROM device is required.
Also see Section 14.4.2.1.
14.4.2.1 on the NoName AXPpci33 system?
Information on bootstrapping OpenVMS (using the Multia files described in Section 14.4.1) on the (unsupported) NoName AXPpci33 module is available at:
Tips for using the Multia files with the AXPpci33:No.
OpenVMS Engineering does not formally support the Alpha XL series, nor will OpenVMS (informally) bootstrap on the Alpha XL series.
OpenVMS can not, will not, and does not bootstrap on the Alpha XL series. The Alpha XL series was targeted for use (only) with the Microsoft Windows NT operating system.
The Alpha XL platform does not resemble other supported platforms.
14.4.4 OpenVMS on the Personal Workstation -a and -au series?
Though OpenVMS is not supported on the Personal Workstation -a series platforms, OpenVMS might or might not bootstrap on the platform.
If you wish to attempt this, you must ensure that all graphics and all I/O controllers in the system are supported by OpenVMS. You must also ensure that you have the most current firmware loaded.
Here are some salient differences within the various Personal Workstation series:
See Section 14.4.4.2 for related details.
14.4.4.1 OpenVMS on the Whitebox Windows-Only series Alpha?
Though OpenVMS is not supported on the "Whitebox" series of Alpha platforms, OpenVMS might or might not bootstrap on the platform. These systems were specifically configured, targeted and supported only for use with the Microsoft Windows NT operating system.
On some of the "Whitebox" systems, the following sequence of console commands can potentially be used to convert the system over to unsupported use by and for OpenVMS Hobbyist users. (But please note that if you wish to attempt this, you must ensure that all graphics and all I/O controllers in the system are supported by OpenVMS, and you must ensure that you have the most current SRM firmware loaded. (For information on locating and downloading the most current Alpha SRM firmware, please see Section 14.3.7.1.) And you must realize that the resulting Whitebox configuration will be entirely unsupported and may or may not be stable and useful.)
set os_type vms cat nvram ! too see what is in this, if anything edit nvram 10 set srm_boot on 20 e init |
If your nvram has other contents, you will need to change the line numbers (10 and 20) to reflect the contents of your configuration. To obtain documentation on the commands of the console editor, enter the ? command within the editor.
The above sequence was reportedly tested on the DIGITAL Server 3300 series, a relative of the AlphaServer 800 series. The DIGITAL Server 3300 is not supported by OpenVMS, though the AlphaServer 800 series is a supported platform. The sequence may or may not work on other platforms, and may or may not work on the DIGITAL Server 3300 platform.
Also see Section 5.33.
14.4.4.2 OpenVMS and Personal Workstation ATA (IDE) bootstrap?
OpenVMS will boot and is supported on specific Personal Workstation -au series platforms, though OpenVMS will require a SCSI CD-ROM if the Intel Saturn I/O (SIO) IDE chip is present in the configuration--- only the Cypress IDE controller chip is supported by OpenVMS for IDE bootstraps. (Configurations with the Intel SIO are not generally considered to be supported systems.)
If you have an -au series system, you can determine which IDE chip you have using the SRM console command:
SHOW CONFIGURATION |
If you see "Cypress PCI Peripheral Controller", you can bootstrap OpenVMS from IDE storage. If you see "Intel SIO 82378", you will need to use and bootstrap from SCSI. (A procedure to load DQDRIVER on the Intel SIO---once the system has bootstrapped from a SCSI device---is expected to be included as part of the contents of the DQDRIVER directory on Freeware V5.0 and later.)
Many of the -a series systems will include the Intel SIO, and thus cannot bootstrap from IDE.
See Section 14.4.4 for related details.
14.4.5 On the Intel Itanium IA-64 platform?
OpenVMS has been ported to the Intel IA-64 architecture; to HP Integrity systems based on the Intel Itanium Processor Family.
The first release of OpenVMS I64 was V8.0, with the first general release of OpenVMS I64 known as V8.2. Yes, there was a V8.1 release, too.
Some Intel and HP terminology: Itanium Processor Family is the name of the current implementation; of the current Intel microprocessor family implementing the IA-64 architecture. IA-64 is the name of the Intel architecture implementing the VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) design known as EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing).
I64 is the name of a family of HP computer systems that use Intel Itanium processors and that are supported by "HP OpenVMS for Integrity Servers" (and itself more commonly known as "OpenVMS I64"); by one of the HP operating systems that runs on HP Integrity hardware.
The Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is the name of the console
environment for Itanium systems, and the Baseboard Management Console
(BMC) and the optional Management Processor (MP) are the most typical
hardware interfaces into the system console.
14.4.5.1 Where can I get Intel Itanium information?
Intel Itanium Processor Family and IA-64 Architecture, Hardware, Software, and related docoumentation materials are available at:
The Intel Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) console documentation:
Please see Section 14.4.5 for Intel Itanium terminology.
14.5 What is the least expensive system that will run OpenVMS?
The cheapest systems that are or have been recently offered by HP that will run OpenVMS Alpha are the AlphaServer DS10 server, the AlphaStation XP900 workstation, the AlphaStation VS10 workstation, and the AlphaStation XP1000 workstation. Other companies sell Alpha-powered systems and Alpha motherboards, some of which will run (and can be purchased with) OpenVMS---see the OpenVMS Software Product Description (SPD) for details on the supported systems and configurations. There are also many used AlphaStation, AlphaServer, and DEC 3000 models available which are quite suitable. For more experienced OpenVMS system managers, the (unsupported) Multia can bootstrap OpenVMS---see Section 14.4.1 for details.
Depending on the OpenVMS version and configuration, the OpenVMS Software Product Description (SPD) is available at:
When purchasing a system, ensure that the system itself is supported, that the system disk drive is supported or closely compatible, that the optical (CD or DVD) drive is supported or is closely compatable and that (in the case of SCSI devices) it also specifically supports 512-byte block transfers; no equivalent requirement exists for IDE devices. Also particularly ensure that the video controller is supported. Use of supported HP hardware will generally reduce the level of integration effort involved.
A CD-ROM, CD-R or DVD drive is required for OpenVMS Alpha installations.
CD-ROM drive compatibility information is available at:
HP operates an AlphaServer information center at:
Alpha Technical information and documentation is available at:Software Product Description (SPD) information, including platform support documentation:
Information on Multia hardware is available at:
Information on DEC 3000 series hardware is available at:
The NetBSD folks maintain useful Alpha hardware information at:
The Alpha architecture is upward- and downward-compatible, and newer instructions are emulated on older platforms, for those cases where the compiler is explicitly requested to generate the newer Alpha instructions.
In particular, OpenVMS Alpha V7.1 and later include the instruction emulation capabilities necessary for the execution of newer Alpha instructions on older Alpha microprocessors. (Instruction emulation capabilities are available for user-mode application code, and are not available to device drivers or other similar kernel-mode code.)
Alpha instructions are available in groups (or subsets). Obviously, there is the base instruction set that is available on all Alpha microprocessors. Then, the following are the current instruction extension groups (or subsets) that are available on some of various recent Alpha microprocessors:
The typical instruction subset that provides the biggest win---and of course, your mileage may vary---is typically the instruction set that is provided by the EV56 and later; specifically, the byte-word instruction subset. To select this subset, use the following:
/ARCHITECTURE=EV56/OPTIMIZE=TUNE=GENERIC |
The /ARCHITECTURE controls the maximum instruction subset that the compiler will generally use, while the /OPTIMIZE=TUNE controls both the instruction-level scheduling and also the instructions generated inside loops---any code resulting from /OPTIMIZE=TUNE that is specific to an instruction subset will be generated only inside loops and will also be "protected" by an AMASK-based test that permits the execution of the proper code for the particular current Alpha microprocessor.
Typically /OPTIMIZE=TUNE=GENERIC is the appropriate choice for tuning, and the /ARCHITECTURE selects the minimum target architecture for general use throughout the generated code.
generated for later architectures and instruction subsets will run on older Alpha systems due to the emulation, but if /ARCHITECTURE is a significant benefit, then the emulation might be a performance penalty.
Please see the OpenVMS Ask The Wizard area for the source code of a (non-privileged) tool that looks at the instruction subsets available on the particular Alpha microprocessor that the tool is run on. This tool demonstrates the use of the Alpha AMASK and IMPLVER instructions.
Please see Section 10.22 and Section 14.10 for additional details and
related considerations.
14.8 What is the Accuracy of the Alpha Time of Year (BB_WATCH) Clock?
The specification for maximum clock drift in the Alpha hardware clock is 50 parts per million (ppm), that is less than ±0.000050 seconds of drift per second, less than ±0.000050 days of drift per day, or less than ±0.000050 years of drift per year, etc. (eg: An error of one second over a day-long interval is roughly 11ppm, or 1000000/(24*60*60).) Put another way, this is .005%, which is around 130 seconds per month or 26 minutes per year.
The software-maintained system time can drift more than this, primarily due to other system activity. Typical causes of drift include extensive high-IPL code (soft memory errors, heavy activity at device IPLs, etc) that are causing the processing of the clock interrupts to be blocked.
Also see Section 14.15, Section 4.2.
14.9 So how do I open up the DEC 3000 chassis?
After removing those two little screws, tilt the back end of the top
shell upwards---then you can remove the lid.
14.10 What is byte swizzling?
"Swizzling" is the term used to describe the operation needed to do partial longword (i.e. byte or word) accesses to I/O space on those systems that don't support it directly. It involved shifting the offset into an address space by 5 (or 7 for one older system), and ORing this into the base address. It then required the size of the operation to be ORed into the low order bits.
That is, because the EV4 and EV5 CPUs did not bring bits 0 and 1 off the chip, to do programmed I/O for bytes/words, the information on the size/offset of the transfer was encoded into the address data. The data itself then had to be shifted into the correct "byte lane" ; into the required offset position within a longword transfer;
The EV56 microprocessor supports byte/word instruction references in memory space, however only specific EV56 systems can support byte/word accesses into I/O space; device drivers may or may not be able to utilize to byte/word instructions to access device registers. Further, even on an EV56 system with hardware support for byte/word accesses into I/O space, the relevant OpenVMS routines typically do not support byte/word access into I/O space.
Systems based on the EV6 microprocessor (with the salient exception of the AlphaServer GS60 and AlphaServer GS140 series, for reasons of platform compatability) support a flat, byte addressable I/O space.
If a device driver uses CRAM or IOC$WRITE_IO/IOC$READ_IO, then OpenVMS will correctly process the swizzling requirements without requiring changes the driver; OpenVMS will transparently swizzle and unswizzle the I/O space references, if needed for the particular target platform. (Access and use of these routines may or may not be feasible within the requirements for a particular device driver, with the decision typically based on the target performance requirements and the expected frequency of device references and thus the expected frequency of calls to these or other similar routines.)
To use byte/word operations on MEMORY, you need to tell the compiler to use the EV56 or EV6 architecture (/ARCHITECTURE=EV56). Memory operations did not swizzle, but the compiler would do long/quad access, and extract/insert bytes as needed. Using /ARCHITECTURE=EV56 allows smaller, more efficient byte/word access logic to memory.
If the application is directly referencing I/O space access across a range of Alpha systems such as is done with the X Windows device drivers, then the driver will need to know how to do swizzling for old platforms, and byte access for new platforms. Device drivers for new graphics controllers can specifically target and specifically require platforms based on EV6 and later Alpha microprocessors because of this requirement, for instance.
Please see Section 10.22 and Section 14.7 for additional details and related considerations.
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