On Sat, 4 Dec 1999, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:

> I can't *believe* I'm having to say this again, for the Nth time in as many
> months:
> 
> 	The PALcode included in MILO has severe bugs.  You can't use
> 	it to run BSD, or OSF/1 for that matter.  It's remarkable that
> 	you can use it to run Linux, and sundry reports of Linux
> 	instability when run with MILO make me suspect that, in fact,
> 	you can't.
> 
> This is the PALcode from the DEC EBSDK, which is really, *really* old
> and was worked-over to be built with a totally different toolchain than
> the PALcode in production SRM.  Ross Harvey was on the verge of fixing
> some of the more obnoxious bugs in it once but managed to obtain the
> real SRM PALcode for the project he was working on, so he didn't.  You
> can't run BSD with this PALcode, so you can't run BSD with MILO.  If you
> want to waste a lot of your time and effort, it would be more
> productive to waste it persuading DEC to release SRM for more platforms,
> or to release the unmodified source code to a _current_ SRM, including
> the PALcode.
> 
> Gee, it'd be nice if anyone would _remember_ this explanation for more
> than a month this time.
> 
	Maybe if it was in the NetBSD/alpha FAQ it wouldn't need to be
	repeated - I've made a pass at updating the #nt-firmware
	entry, please let me know if I've missed anything.

		David/absolute