I'd like to suggest you another thing. The bootloader Milo for the
Linux/Alpha seems (I don't have an Alpha nor do I track the Alpha
project very closly) only to support the SRM firmware. But I wrote
the bootloader Milo (yes, the same name. Purely random, I swear!)
for the Linux/MIPS systems running an ARC firmware conforming to the
MS specification. As I assume that the ARC firmware in both systems
is quite compatible and the assembler part in the MIPS / ARC version
of MILO is very low it shouldn't be to hard to change the bootloader
to support the Alpha. Just as proof - Milo itself is based on an
old version of the Linux/68k bootloader for the Amiga. That way
booting from the ARC console either one or another OS would be very
convenient. If I however should have based this posting on a wrong
assumption about the ARC firmware for Alphas just forget this
posting.
The problem isn't primarily how to get ARC to boot vmlinux. The real
problem is that Linux wants the OSF/1 flavor of the PALcode not
Windows NT one (actually, that could be fixed, too, but read on). I
think when MILO (the Alpha version...) is finished, you'll be able to
boot MILO and then Linux (actually, these two steps probably can be
merged into one). Booting MILO certainly won't involve more than
changing a jumper on the motherboard (maybe that's what the TURBO
switch is *really* meant for? :). It may even be possible to boot
MILO/Linux directly from the ARC console (pure guessing here, but
maybe this is where we could benefit from the work Ralf did for
Linux/MIPS).
--david