PWS500a (Mitia) first install

[Ulrich]

Hi Everybody 

I'm familiar with x86 based FreeBSD for about 4 years using 4.1 - 4.9 on an 
Intel box. 

I bought a used PWS500a with two 2 GB disks attached to an Adaptec2940(UW) 
SCSI controller and a Toshiba ATAPI CD-ROM drive attached to a second SCSI 
bus. From the FreeBSD technical documentation I learnt that it isn't 
possible to boot from SCSI disks attached to an Adaptec controller. Since 
I'm also familiar with Alphas I know that it isn't that simple to boot them 
from floppy either. 

I would be happy if someone could give me some advice what I should buy and 
how I should proceed to get the box running freebsd 4.11. I thought of 
buying an IDE disk and removing the 2 small SCSI disks which have Windows/NT 
4 installed on them. I already opened the box and detected that there isn't 
much space left so I doubt whether I find a place where I can put the IDE 
drive. 

Would it be possible to prepare boot floppy disks to get the installer up 
and running and then install from the CD-ROM drive? Or do I have to prepare 
for a network install which of course assumes that it is possible to prepare 
boot floppies. I also assume that it should be possible to set up my Intel 
FreeBSD box to serve bootp requests and to provide the alpha installation 
files from the FreeBSD alpha distribution cd. Any comments on that? 

TIA 

Ulrich