Hi,

Just getting started with a UP2000 and have what seems like a very stupid
question. This machine already has a working RH6.2 install on it. When I
boot up it goes straight into RedHat. How do I stop this and enter the BIOS?

Boot up goes like this:

BLUE Screen
Testing Memory
Testing System
Then "Alpha 264DP 666Mhz Console A5.5-82 Date 1999" appears, followed by

some text where I see mention of "aboot" and it what appears to be the
instruction to boot vmlinux.gz

The screen changes to a RED screen when it starts trying to boot the
kernel.

I would like to attempt install Alpha Core or Debian, but to do so I need to
get into that BIOS! The PDFs online stat that pressing "F2" during the
*first* boot (ie before OS is setup?) launches AlphaBios. I have tried this
at various points to no avail. Any suggestions?

"Matt Simis" <mattsimis@hotmail.com> writes:

Just getting started with a UP2000 and have what seems like a very stupid
question. This machine already has a working RH6.2 install on it. When I
boot up it goes straight into RedHat. How do I stop this and enter the BIOS?

BIOS is a word from the peecee world. What you are looking for is the
SRM.

Boot up goes like this:

BLUE Screen
Testing Memory
Testing System
Then "Alpha 264DP 666Mhz Console A5.5-82 Date 1999" appears, followed by

Hit control-c here.

some text where I see mention of "aboot" and it what appears to be the
instruction to boot vmlinux.gz

The screen changes to a RED screen when it starts trying to boot the
kernel.

The red screen is normal.

I would like to attempt install Alpha Core or Debian, but to do so I need to
get into that BIOS! The PDFs online stat that pressing "F2" during the
*first* boot (ie before OS is setup?) launches AlphaBios. I have tried this
at various points to no avail. Any suggestions?

You don't want AlphaBIOS, unless you intend to run mswindows on the
machine.

Boot up goes like this:

BLUE Screen
Testing Memory
Testing System
Then "Alpha 264DP 666Mhz Console A5.5-82 Date 1999" appears, followed by

That's a terribly old version of SRM. I have 5.8.81 on my
UP2K.

Hit control-c here.

You might have to hit control-C several/many times.

Once you get the '>>>' prompt, maybe with a 'P00' somewhere
in it, you want to do 'show boot*' (without the quotation
marks) to see the values of environment variables whose
names start with 'boot'. IIRC, it's boot_action or
something similar. Maybe it's auto_action. (A Google
groups search should narrow it down.) Once you find the
real variable name, set its value to 'halt'. That way, any
subsequent resets will get you directly to the SRM prompt.

"Robert M. Riches Jr." <spamtrap42@verizon.net> writes:

snip

Once you get the '>>>' prompt, maybe with a 'P00' somewhere
in it, you want to do 'show boot*' (without the quotation
marks) to see the values of environment variables whose
names start with 'boot'. IIRC, it's boot_action or
something similar. Maybe it's auto_action. (A Google
groups search should narrow it down.) Once you find the
real variable name, set its value to 'halt'. That way, any
subsequent resets will get you directly to the SRM prompt.

auto_action it is. The valid values are 'halt' and 'boot'.

--
Måns Rullgård
mru@inprovide.com

Thanks guys. Got that sorted and updated to the latest SRM on
Alphalinux.org.

Tell me.. is it normal that "show memory" doesnt show the full amount of
ram? The system was sold to me as having 4x256MB, however "show memory"
displays just 512MB (Array 0).

It definately has 4 sticks of something, I know as some moron moved one of
the sticks out of the alternating Bank pattern which caused the machine not
to boot when I tried it first.

On 2004-12-15, Matt Simis <mattsimis@hotmail.com> wrote:


Tell me.. is it normal that "show memory" doesnt show the full amount of
ram? The system was sold to me as having 4x256MB, however "show memory"
displays just 512MB (Array 0).

It definately has 4 sticks of something, I know as some moron moved one
of
the sticks out of the alternating Bank pattern which caused the machine
not
to boot when I tried it first.