Conference wrksys::alphastation

1974.0. "Booting AlphaBIOS from floppy vs. Re-flashing" by NNTPD::"[email protected]" (Michael Jones) Thu May 15 1997 19:34

I have a customer who just received 20 AS255s with ZLXp-E2 cards. The systems
are in a college lab and must be switched between UNIX and NT several times
each
day. I helped him set up the ability to boot the AlphaBIOS from either a
floppy
or a bootp server.

If he updates the firmware to change consoles, everything works fine. The 
problem is when he boots the AlphaBIOS from a floppy or bootp, NT 4.0 will
not boot. It appears to hang at the blue screen with the system info at the
top
and no dots present.

If he reinstalls NT and does not install the Open3D drivers every works fine
but of course leaves him with VGA resolution and color.

He is using Firmware CD V3.8.  We tried the AlphaBIOS (abboot.exe) off of 
both 3.8 and 3.9 CD with the same results.

Are there environment variables that affect the function of the ZLXp NT
drivers?

Are there other factors that I should be looking at?

Thanks for any help,
Michael


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