                        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.

