3–1
3
Configuring Your System
Introduction
This chapter shows you how to configure your AlphaStation 255 system. The firmware
used to configure your system depends the operating system being used. Systems running
the Microsoft Windows NT Workstation operating system use the AlphaBIOS firmware.
Systems running the OpenVMS or Digital UNIX operating systems use the SRM firmware.
Configuring with AlphaBIOS Firmware
AlphaBIOS firmware supports the Microsoft Windows NT Workstation operating system.
You can use AlphaBIOS firmware to perform various configuration tasks, such as:
•
Selecting a copy of the Windows NT system to boot.
•
Displaying system configuration information.
•
Setting up the hard disk.
•
Setting the date and time.
•
Enabling and setting the delay for auto start.
•
Setting or changing the AlphaBIOS password.
Starting AlphaBIOS
When the system is powered on, and the power-on self-tests (POST) sucessfully completes,
the AlphaBIOS firmware is loaded and started. AlphaBIOS performs several initialization
tasks. Among them are, initialize the keyboard and video devices, test memory, and detect
and initialize SCSI disk controllers. After the video device is initialized, subsequent steps
are displayed on the monitor in an initialization window.
When the SCSI initialization is complete, AlphaBIOS leaves the initialization window and
displays the boot screen.