AlphaBIOS V5.67 Release Notes This document complements the AlphaBIOS Configuration Guide by including information that has become available since the most recent Configuration Guide was published. You will find information such as feature changes, fixes, and known problems here. For detailed information on using AlphaBIOS, download the Configuration Guide from http://www.windows.digital.com/support/driver.asp. AlphaBIOS is released on a quarterly basis for all AlphaBIOS products. Periodically, it is necessary perform an out-of-cycle AlphaBIOS release for a subset of products or for new products. The notes for each release indicate the products supported by the release. To date, the products that are supported by quarterly releases include: - DIGITAL Personal Workstation - DIGITAL Ultimate Workstation - Alpha XLT - Alpha Station 255 - Alpha Station 600a - Alpha Server 800 - Alpha Server 1000/5XX - Alpha Server 1000a/5XX - Alpha Server 1200 - Alpha Server 4000 - Alpha Server 4100 - DIGITAL Server 3000/3300 - DIGITAL Server 5000/5300 - DIGITAL Server 7000/7300 AlphaBIOS 5.67 Release Overview The version 5.67 release of AlphaBIOS primarily addresses PCI configuration enhancements, NT serviceability support, and post NT 5.0 (Beta 2) issues. Supported Products The AlphaBIOS 5.67 is an out-of-cycle release. The AlphaBIOS products supported by this release are: - DIGITAL Personal Workstation - DIGITAL Ultimate Workstation - Alpha Server 1200 - Alpha Server 4000 - Alpha Server 4100 - DIGITAL Server 5000/5300 - DIGITAL Server 7000/7300 PCI Configuration Enhancements PCI configuration enhancements were added to AlphaBIOS 5.67 to relax PCI configurator error handling of devices that reported non-compliant PCI resources. The enhancement allows devices that request PCI resources in a non-compliant manner to now function under Windows NT. Previously, when AlphaBIOS encountered a non-compliant PCI resource, the entire configuration for the non-compliant device was filled with zeros thereby disabling the device. AlphaBIOS has changed to behave as follows: - Non-compliant PCI resources will be invalidated. Non-compliant resources will be written with the hexadecimal number 0xdeadbeef. Writing this unique value provides users with the ability to identify invalid PCI resources from the AlphaBIOS configuration menu. - All other settings will be honored. AlphaBIOS will attempt to assign, to the device, all PCI resources not identified as non-compliant. This will enable the device to function under Windows NT. The degree of functionality is dependent on the device. Although this change was specifically required to support the Gerber Woodbridge device, it greatly enhances the flexibility of the AlphaBIOS PCI configurator. NT Serviceability Support AlphaBIOS 5.67 includes latent NT serviceability support for the following products: - DIGITAL Ultimate Workstation Alpha Server 1200 - Alpha Server 4000 - Alpha Server 4100 - DIGITAL Server 5300 - DIGITAL Server 7300 AlphaBIOS implements only a small component of the overall serviceability scheme. Customers must also update the SRM console and Windows NT HAL in order to obtain a system software configuration that includes NT serviceability. To date, the SRM console and HAL components are not yet available. SRM console support for Windows NT serviceability is scheduled for release on the v5.3 Firmware Update CD. The Windows NT HAL for Windows NT serviceability support is scheduled to release in the same time frame as the v5.3 Firmware Update CD. Post Windows NT 5.0 (Beta 2) Support AlphaBIOS release 5.67 contains fixes necessary to support post Windows NT 5.0 (Beta 2) on Alpha systems. See Fix Descriptions section for more detail. Fixes Included in AlphaBIOS 5.67 Fixes Common to all Platforms PCI Configuration - Relax error handling of non-compliant PCI resources. NT 5.0 (Beta 2): - Add support for NT 5.0 advanced boot configuration menu (Safeboot). This menu is entered by pressing F5 or F8 from the boot selection menu and provides advanced boot options that enhance the repair of Windows NT 5.0. Entering this menu for non-NT5 boot selections has no impact on system boot behavior. Although this feature was not officially supported on Alpha systems for NT 5.0 (Beta 2), latent support in Windows NT 5.0 (Beta 2) does exist. See Windows NT 5.0 (Beta 2) release notes for more information. Fixes for AlphaServer 1200, AlphaServer 4000/4100, DIGITAL Server 5000/5300, DIGITAL Server 7100/7300, & Digital Ultimate Workstation - Add latent NT serviceability support. See Release Overview for more details. - Add SRM-dependency server-management warning to inform customers of potentially invalid firmware configurations. See Release Overview for more details. Known Issues This section deals with knows issues for which there is either not yet a solution, or a temporary workaround. Known Issues common to all AlphaBIOS products - The PCI configurator enhancement for this release may potentially cause problems for certain PCI configurations behind a PCI-to-PCI bridge (PPB). One side effect of the enhancement is for handling of errors where PCI configuration PCI IO or PCI memory resource requests cannot be satisfied for a device installed in a PPB slot. If this occurs, the PCI IO or PCI memory resources for all devices behind the PPB are invalidated. Invalidation is performed by writing the hexadecimal value 0xdeadbeef to PCI IO or PCI memory resources for all devices behind the PPB. If such configurations include devices that advertise a ROM BIOS, then AlphaBIOS may crash during BIOS emulation. The BIOS emulator will misinterpret the value 0xdeadbeef as a valid PCI address and attempt to read this address. This problem will be fixed in the next release. - Due to the focused nature of this out-of-cycle AlphaBIOS release, all Known Issues for the AlphaBIOS 5.66 release still exist in AlphaBIOS 5.67. Known Issues for AlphaServer 1200, AlphaServer 4000/4100, DIGITAL Server 5000/5300, DIGITAL Server 7100/7300, & Digital Ultimate Workstation - Special steps must be taken to update the firmware configuration for NT serviceability support. This is because the AlphaBIOS firmware image has been moved to a new location in flash in order to provide space for fatal error logging. SRM v5.3 will be the first SRM version to support the new flash layout. When updating the system firmware to obtain NT serviceability support, the following steps must be taken: 1. Update the SRM to v5.3 using the LFU. 2. Reboot the system so that we are now running SRM v5.3. 3. Update the AlphaBIOS to v5.67 or greater using the LFU. SRM v5.3 will put AlphaBIOS in the new flash location. When the SRM required for NT serviceability support is made available, more details will be provided on how to update the firmware configuration. AlphaBIOS 5.66 Release Overview The version 5.66 release of AlphaBIOS primarily addresses SCSIBIOS emulation, enhanced PCI DMA mode support, and NT 5.0 (Beta 2) issues. Supported Products All AlphaBIOS products are supported by this release. SCSIBIOS Emulation SCSIBIOS emulation support has been added for platforms that incorporate the CIA/DSW host bridge chip-set, including: - Alpha XL 300/366/433 - AlphaStation 600 5/266, 300, 333 - AlphaServer 600A 5/500 - AlphaServer 1000 5/266, 300 - AlphaServer 1000A 5/266, 300 - AlphaServer 800 5/333, 400, 600 - DIGITAL Server 3000/3300 When AlphaBIOS 5.66 is first installed, SCSIBIOS emulation is disabled by default. This prevents undesirable changes to changes to system behavior. You can enable SCSBIOS emulation through the AlphaBIOS Advanced CMOS Settings Menu. When SCSIBIOS emulation is enabled, AlphaBIOS scans the system for SCSI adapters containing a BIOS. If a SCSI BIOS is detected, AlphaBIOS initializes the BIOS for the corresponding adapter. You might encounter the following issues after enabling SCSIBIOS emulation: - The first time SCSIBIOS emulation is enabled, you might be prompted to run the SCSIBIOS configuration utility to repair the SCSI adapter's NVRAM settings. Run the configuration utility as instructed. - For systems that contain a Qlogic-based PCI adapter in addition to an on-board Qlogic SCSI device, you will notice that the system takes a long time to complete initialization of the Qlogic PCI adapter. Until this problem is resolved, you can minimize the impact of this problem by enabling SCSIBIOS emulation for Qlogic-based controllers only when it is necessary to run the Qlogic configuration utility. Enhanced PCI DMA Mode Support PCI Master DMA-Window Mode configuration support has been added for platforms that support PCI Scatter-Gather DMA. This new Advanced CMOS feature allows you to control the DMA resources allocated under Windows NT 4.0 for the PCI Master Scatter-Gather DMA Window. To use the enhanced DMA functionality, your system must have Windows NT 4.0 with OEM HAL Revision D or later installed. You can avoid manually installing the updated HAL file by installing Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 when it becomes available. Supported DMA modes include: - Legacy Mode -- use the legacy (original) settings with fixed window base and size. This mode may be required for certain non-compliant PCI devices. - Dynamic Mode -- Dynamically size the Master DMA-window proportional to the amount of physical memory present in the system. Relocate the DMA-window base address to a location compatible with the system IO address space. This DMA mode is the default setting. - Maximum Mode -- Select the maximum size, 512 MB, for the Master DMA-window. Relocate the DMA-window base address to a location compatible with the system IO address space. This mode may be required for large PCI device configurations. Windows NT 5.0 Beta 2 Support AlphaBIOS release 5.66 contains fixes necessary to support beta 2 of Windows NT 5.0 on Alpha systems. See Fix Descriptions section for more detail. Fixes Included in AlphaBIOS 5.66 Fixes Common to all Platforms SCSIBIOS Emulation: - SCSIBIOS emulator fix to support configurations with more than ten drives when an AdvanSys SCSI adapter is installed in the system. - Changed the SCSBIOS emulated memory back to 512K to fix long KZPCM SCSIBIOS initialization times. - Remove interrupt-bitmask checking in SCSIBIOS emulator to fix problems with entering the Qlogic SCSIBIOS configuration utility when the Qlogic installed behind an Adaptec SCSI controller. Network Support: - Speed optimizations for the AlphaBIOS DC21X4 network driver, including use transmit-threshold mode and reduce minimum wait time in polling to finish transmit. - Fix a checksum error in the network file cache that occurred after loading a smaller image with same file name from network. - Reduce TFTP server overhead by modifying the AlphaBIOS TFTP client to terminate the TFTP touch-file transaction. This will increase the reliability of TFTP file transactions. - Miscellaneous AlphaBIOS network fixes. NT 5.0 (Beta 2): - Update the AlphaBIOS ATAPI IDE Miniport driver to NT 4.0 (1381) version. For NT 5.0 and certain NT 4.0 configurations, the new driver is required to support AlphaBIOS clean IDE device reset after NT shutdown. The previous AlphaBIOS driver version was not able to reset devices that NT had configured in busmaster DMA modes, resulting in the device disappearing under AlphaBIOS. - Change the AlphaBIOS heap-sizing algorithm to reserve a maximum of 8 MB of space for AlphaBIOS heap. This restriction reduces the memory footprint of AlphaBIOS and is necessary to support NT 5.0 hibernation features. - To prevent conflicts with NT 5.0 network PnP support, shutdown the AlphaBIOS network device prior to loading NT. CMOS Setup: - Add the Master DMA Window Mode setting to Advanced CMOS Settings for platforms that support PCI Scatter-Gather DMA. See Release Overview for more detail. - Align Advanced CMOS setting fields and single space Advanced CMOS entries to allow enlargement of help window. - Due to NVRAM space limitations, reduce the maximum number of Operating System (OS) boot selections from four to three. Attempting to install more than three instances of Window NT on a system will now result in failure to create the OS boot selection. Miscellaneous: - Pass the PCI device present bitmap to HAL for all products. AlphaBIOS calculates this bitmap during PCI device configuration. By passing the bitmap to NT, we reduce boot time by saving the HAL from having to recalculate this bitmap. Fixes for AlphaServer 1200, AlphaServer 4000/4100, DIGITAL Server 5000/5300, DIGITAL Server 7100/7300, and Digital Ultimate Workstation - Add support for 8 MB BCache size CPU daughter cards by reporting the proper Bcache size to NT. - Implement a workaround to support Qlogic SCSIBIOS configure utility. Fixes for Digital Personal Workstation - On systems with an onboard Cypress 82CY693U IDE controller, implement a workaround to prevent Windows NT 4.0 ATAPI miniport driver from generating NT EventLog entries. The workaround will prevent the second IDE PCI function from responding to PCI configuration accesses under NT. Note this does not prevent devices on the second IDE channel from functioning under NT because the IDE controller is configured in legacy mode. When configured in legacy mode, access to devices on both channels is supported from the first PCI IDE function. All necessary device configuration for the second channel is performed under AlphaBIOS. Fixes for Alpha XL 300/366/433 AlphaStation 600, AlphaServer 600A. AlphaServer 1000, AlphaServer 1000A & AlphaServer 800 - Add SCSIBIOS emulation support for CIA-based products. See Major Features for more information. - Disable SCSIBIOS emulation support by default on CIA-based products. See Major Features for more information. Known Issues This section deals with knows issues for which there is either not yet a solution, or a temporary workaround. Known Issues for AlphaServer 1200, AlphaServer 4000/4100, DIGITAL Server 5000/5300, DIGITAL Server 7100/7300, & Digital Ultimate Workstation - You might not be able to exit SCSIBIOS configuration utilities. When attempting to exit a SCSIBIOS configuration utility, the system may hang. To work around this issue, either perform a system reset or disable the "Warm Reboot" Advanced CMOS setting. Note that disabling "Warm Reboot" will cause AlphaBIOS to perform a full system reset during NT reboots. - Qlogic SCSIBIOS initialization takes longer when the Qlogic is installed behind an Adaptec-based controller and SCSIBIOS emulation is enabled for both adapter types. To workaround this issue, only enable SCSIBIOS emulation when it is necessary to run the adapter's Auto-configuration utility. Known Issues for Alpha XL 300/366/433 AlphaStation 600, AlphaServer 600A. AlphaServer 1000, AlphaServer 1000A & AlphaServer 800 - When running SCSIBIOS emulation for the first time, you might be required to run the SCSIBIOS configuration utility to repair the adapter's NVRAM settings. See the Release Overview section for more information. - When Qlogic-based SCSI plug-in adapters are installed on systems with onboard Qlogic devices, Qlogic SCSIBIOS initialization will take up to two minutes, with one additional minute for each adapter installed. See the Release Overview section for more information.