Hi,
after my pretty good VAX treck last weekend (more details coming
up on my project web site at a later time) I finally have SDI disks.
I hooked one up last night and did all the checking as per the
RA9x manual (yes I have one plus many more, will scan those at
some time...) and it seems to be O.K. (even though it was pretty
messed up stored in a barn among lots of birds for many years).
Here is one para about where I am at and then I have some
specific questions for Geoff Roberts or Ragge or anyone who
has had experienced any luck with getting a 6000 up to operation.
I have bootable tape for Ultrix 4.1 and VMS 5.3 both TK50. None
of them work. I seem to have no luck with the TK70 and I have
no way finding out what's wrong. I tried to boot from that RA90
disk, even though I don't know what's on it. It has unit #0, so
I thought it might be a system disk. But that too failed with
some I/O error very early in the process. I also have a TU81+ and
VMS bootable tape on 9-track, maybe that's more reliable? Tonight's
project is to move the TU81+ into the basement and hook it up.
I'm afraid I'll get stuck there too and what then? Network
booting?
Here's some more detail and questions:
The TK50 boot proceeds for quite a while, although it never shows
any message on the console about where it is at before it halts
due to some unspecified error. However, about one or two minutes
into the tape running the system-panel's FAULT light comes on and
at the same time both yellow and green LEDs on the TKB70 board
extinguish. That's for about a second or two. Then the lights
go back to normal and the fault light turned off. Another 30
seconds to a minute tape streaming and the same light-spiel happens
again: fault on, TKB70 LEDs off, and back to normal. Now a shorter
time (like 10 seconds) of tape streaming and again. From now on that
repeats for about 4 or 5 more cycles and finally the system is
halted and console says: system halted due to previous error.
However, no error message is being printed. I have no idea where
I am in the process.
I have tried cleaning the TK70 read/write head of course. I have
tried a different copy of that Ultrix tape. It's always the same.
Is this bliking of fault and shutting off of both TBK70 LEDs
normal for media read errors or does it indicate something more
serious? How can I tell where in the process I am? Is there an
error flag somewhere in memory that I could EXAMINE to find out
what is wrong?
BTW: at first I had my CIBCA cards in and the boot process would
halt earlier: system would say "insufficient memory for CI" and
"10% or more of the memory is bad". Who is checking memory there?
I could not find anything in Ultrix 4.2 sources that would generate
such a message. And why would it anyway, because my system check
tells me that I have 512 MB of memory OK. Or does it speak of
10% of the CIBCA's internal memory?
Is there a boot flag that I could turn on that would cause the
loader etc. to be more verbose?
Has anyone tried booting Ultrix over the network? I am going to
try that but all I have is Ultrix on TK50 (that doesn't work)
and sources without any VAX running to compile them on. Is there
a cross compiler suite? I'd like to compile with the DEBUG
flag set.
Thanks for your suggestions,
-Gunther
--
Gunther_Schadow-------------------------------http://aurora.rg.iupui.edu
Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
1050 Wishard Blvd., Indianapolis IN 46202, Phone: (317) 630 7960
schadow_at_aurora.rg.iupui.edu------------------#include <usual/disclaimer>
Received on Tue Oct 23 2001 - 13:01:34 BST