SUMMARY: booting from a floppy to install NT on an AlphaServer 40 0 4/166

From: Nibby, Dana \(WT Chen\) <"Nibby,>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 13:08:23 -0400

Thanks to:
Brian Benson [brian_at_kepler.lsmsa.edu]
Donald Maner [DManer_at_atc.skytel.com]
tom fenn [tom_at_spirit.gcrc.upenn.edu]
Ken Bendall {DSL AK} [KenB_at_datacom.co.nz]
Tom Webster [webster_at_ssdpdc.lgb.cal.boeing.com]
rye [rye_at_jtasc.acom.mil]
Andrew C. Stoffel [acs_at_campus.com]

My question was:
>
> I've been asked to wipe an AlphaServer 400 4/166 clean in order to
> install NT 4.0 on it (not my idea),
> and I'm wondering how I might go about doing this - right now, the
> machine is running DEC Unix 3.2c.
>
> Can I boot from one of the DOS floppies which come with the NT
> distribution? Tried boot dva0 (or something similar)
> and was unsuccessful. Or can I boot from the NT CD-ROM somehow?

   First of all, of course I need a video card to install NT - the video
card in the spare alphaserver should work
   with the other alpha, but I still don't know if it's compatible with
NT - I'm pulling the board this afternoon to see
   what kind of card it is.

   Otherwise, I've been told many PC video cards (some anyway) have
Alpha drivers, and should work.

   As for installing NT itself, I'll need to halt the machine into SRM
monitor mode % halt -h now
  and get into ARC monitor mode by typing 'arc' at the >>> prompt. May
need to set the OS variable to
  NT before getting into ARC (or AlphaBIOS) - set OS_TYPE NT.
Apparently, from here you can insert the
  NT CD-ROM and everything is menu driven from then on.

  Will also need to create a 2-10MB FAT partition even if using mostly
NTFS partitions.

  Thanks again.

      - Dana

Dana Nibby
W.T. Chen and Company
55 Broadway Street, Cambridge, MA 02142
Received on Wed Jun 24 1998 - 19:08:02 NZST

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