I've put together a new system consisting of a AlphaPC 164 motherboard
and a 21164-P7 CPU (500 MHz for NT) with the intent of running *BSD. The
system will not even boot the SRM console. I tried another 21164-P7 chip
and it behaves the same (no boot SRM). The P7 chips boot the ARC console
and run NT just fine. If I plug in a 21164-P6 (433 MHz), the SRM console
boots fine. Apparently DEC has followed through with crippling the NT
versions of the Alpha chips starting with P7 so that you can't run digital
UNIX (and apparently the SRM console which is of interest here) without
spending a few thousand dollars more for the UNIX version of the chips?
Is this true? What other issues are involved here?

Without a working  SRM console from DEC, are there any alternative
consoles that can boot *BSD, or are there plans to make or adapt a
console (like the Linux lilo) to *BSD ?

--Scott