Zillions of questions time:
I'm thinking of buying an Alpha motherboard and getting a Linux
system up on it. Has anyone tried to bootstrap an Linux/AXP system
with no support other than an existing x86 Linux system (i.e. with
no pre-existing Alpha OS). Is this even possible (well, it is,
time and effort)?
What support from OSF/1 does Linux/AXP rely on? Compiler, libraries,
bootstrap code? Anything else? I'm assuming I'm going to have
to get an alpha cross compilation environment up on my intel box,
and get binutils work with OSF/1's native format - or at least
something the bootstrap code can deal with. Has someone done
this?
I gather one can buy relatively cheap Alpha motherboards which can
drop into a PC case and take normal PCI cards (the impression I
get from reading the Alpha parts of the Linux source). Does anyone
have experience with these sorts of boards; what works, what's
broken, what is worth using?
Have there been any thoughts about using ELF as an executable and
object file format, or is the OSF/1 one going to be the sole format
(I assume that even if ELF is adopted, keeping OSF/1 compatability
is considered desirable).
Thanks,
J