1    Introduction

This chapter explains the New Hardware Delivery (NHD) process and describes the contents of the NHD4 kit.

All system hardware requires supporting modules in the operating system kernel. Without this kernel support, the operating system cannot interact with the hardware and may fail to function altogether.

A New Hardware Delivery (NHD) kit includes kernel modules that let your system support new or upgraded hardware. The kit is distributed on CD-ROM and also can be downloaded from the World Wide Web.

NHD lets you install new hardware support without reinstalling the base operating system. However, you must reboot your system to build a kernel that includes the modules that support your new hardware. The bootlink process builds a generic kernel in memory, using generic kernel modules along with those included in your NHD kit. This bootlinked kernel is not written to disk, but allows the boot utility to include the hardware support modules into your running kernel.

Note

If you need to boot genvmunix after you have installed hardware support, your system will not recognize the hardware you installed with NHD. To access all of the kernel modules supplied by genvmunix and NHD, use the following command to boot /GENERIC:

>>> boot -fi GENERIC

The NHD4 release includes support for the following hardware:

1.1    VX1 AGP Graphics Controller

The 3Dlabs Oxygen VX1 AGP graphics controller provides accelerated 2D graphics port (AGP) support as well as support for PCI platforms on Compaq AlphaServer ES45 Model 1B systems. The kernel device driver supports AGP transactions on the AGP bus and adds direct memory access (DMA) support, where the original VX1 PCI driver only supported programmed I/O (PIO). This release includes the device-dependent libraries for the Xserver, also supporting DMA. 3D graphics are not supported.

The orderable part number for the VX1 AGP graphics controller is SN-PBXGF-BC.

1.2    AlphaServer DS20L System

The Compaq AlphaServer DS20L system is a dual-processor system in a high-density form factor. It supports up to two Alpha 21264-series processors at speeds up to 833 MHz and the Compaq 21272 core logic chip set. This system includes a Maximum 166 MHz system bus with Double Data Rate (DDR) transfers for a maximum bandwidth of 2.67 GB per second, a 256-bit memory bus, two 64-bit 33 MHz PCI buses, and an external L2 cache with a 128-bit data path supporting 4 MB cache per processor in DDR SRAMs. The DS20L can support up to 2 GB of memory in eight 256 MB dual inline memory modules (DIMMs) and provides two 64-bit 33 MHz PCI slots for I/O expansion.

The following are the orderable part numbers for DS20L systems: