chris@yarra.oz.au (Chris Jankowski) (07/20/89)
In article <209@trux.UUCP> car@trux.UUCP (Chris Rende) writes: > In article <76854@pyramid.pyramid.com>, csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst) writes: >> >Who ever heard of booting from Floppy? >> >> What would you suggest? You can't do the IMPL from hard disk, unless we had >> a dedicated disk just for the SSP. DEC used an HP catridge, although those >> proved to be more expensive and less reliable than a simple 5" floppy. The >> tape is also inappropriate for automatic dumping of hardware diagnostics. > > Does the boot process require that floppy to be present? > > If so it's a scary thought. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. > I'd be very uncomfortable knowing that my mightly mega-$$$$$ Unix box could > be rendered useless by a missing or blown 50 cent floppy. I cannot agree with this line of reasoning. Aren't you afraid that your kilo-$$$$ car may be rendered useless by a failure of a 50 cent valve in each of your tyres? And there are four of them to blow out. (:-)). Would you prefer to have zilion parts super duper self regulating self propelled auto-inflating pressure controller instead? Lets look at the task first and then discuss options you may have. The task is in principle to download some tens of kB to SSP (this is a separate support processor) and you cannot use disks yet as the microcode of the disk controller has not been loaded yet. You also need to store some error messages SSP may have about hardware problems it detected in the system. So you need a read/write device of at least about 200 KB capacity which will not loose its contents when power goes off. It also should have cheap and easily transportable media - microcode gets upgraded and error messages have to be analysed in the vendor premises. Well, what would you propose? Core memory, buble memory - what about cost? Take-away 20MB disk - cost, what about just posting it - did you see how mail is handled. Battery backed RAM - may look reasonable - we shall see - MIS server is to use it as far as I know. But it is still more expensive than floppy. Another separate computer with its own I/O. It's no joke. I know of at least one UNIX machine (NP1) which used a fully equipped AT class clone with 20MB drive exactly for this purpose. What is likely to fail first a floppy or the whole AT with hard disk, own memory, disk controller, video controller and colour monitor? And how do you distribute microcode patches then? Actually floppy stands up quite well. If the floppy itself is broken, you can't boot and you try another one. Once the system is up and running SSP writes only some hardware error messages (if any) on the floppy and even if the floppy wears down sitting in the drive forever - who cares about those unreadable cryptic error messages. -m------- Chris Jankowski - Senior Systems Engineer chris@yarra.oz{.au} ---mmm----- Pyramid Technology Australia fax +61 3 820 0536 -----mmmmm--- 11th Floor, 14 Queens Road tel. +61 3 820 0711 -------mmmmmmm- Melbourne, Victoria, 3004 AUSTRALIA (03) 820 0711 I speak for myself only etc., etc.