Specifications

17 January 1997 – Subject to Change
Introduction to the AlphaPC 164 Motherboard 1–7
Fail-Safe Booter
1.3 Fail-Safe Booter
The fail-safe booter is a small (64KB) firmware program that provides a recovery
procedure when the flash is corrupted. When the flash becomes corrupted, this utility
can be run to facilitate booting a firmware update utility from a floppy diskette that is
capable of reprogramming the flash. When the fail-safe booter runs, it expects to find
a floppy containing the file fwupdate.exe. If the file is found, the fail-safe booter
loads and executes this program.
Due to the size limitation placed on the fail-safe booter, status is not displayed on
either the graphics display or the serial communications ports while the firmware
update utility is loading. The user is informed that the fail-safe booter is in operation
by a series of beeps along with the activity light being activated on the floppy drive
while the program is loading. The beep code 1-2-3 is the beep sequence assigned to
the fail-safe booter. That is one beep, then two beeps, followed by three beeps.
A user can force the fail-safe booter to run instead of the primary firmware by
inserting jumper CF7, described in Section 2.1.6. If the primary firmware image
becomes corrupted in flash memory, the fail-safe booter is automatically run to
enable the user to reprogram the flash image.
In the unlikely event that the entire flash is corrupted such that neither the fail-safe
booter or the primary firmware can be started, the Xload procedure (Uload on
UNIX) can be used along with the SROM Mini-Debugger to provide a low-level
flash recovery mechanism. Xload and Uload are provided on the EBSDK along
with instructions on how to use them. The EBSDK also includes source code for the
fail-safe booter and some of the tools required to build it.
1.4 Software Support
The support elements described in this section are either included with the
AlphaPC 164 or are available separately.
1.4.1 Windows NT ARC Firmware
Windows NT ARC firmware is required to install and boot the Microsoft
Windows NT operating system on the AlphaPC 164. This Digital Semiconductor
firmware comes factory installed in the 21A04-B0 variation of the AlphaPC 164.
When installed, this firmware occupies the flash blocks reserved for the primary
firmware. Binary images of the Windows NT ARC firmware are included on the
EBSDK, along with a license describing the terms for use and distribution.