Can NetBSD/alpha run on systems with only NT (ARC) firmware?
Not currently. NetBSD/alpha requires the SRM Console firmware (used by OSF/1 and OpenVMS) to function. There are two main reasons for this: the console software is what’s responsible for loading the operating system’s primary bootstrap program, and the firmware provides the PALcode for the system, which handles low-level memory management and interrupt handling details on a system-specific basis. (NetBSD uses the Digital Unix PALcode.) The NT PALcode is documented pretty well in the Green Book, and probably even better in the Red Book. It might not be totally unreasonable to think about a NetBSD/arcalpha …
