first step getting VAX 6000-400 booted ...

From: UberTechnoid_at_home.com <(UberTechnoid_at_home.com)>
Date: Fri Oct 26 16:46:32 2001

You might try making a tape with a NetBSD/vax miniroot image on it. That
is a little 2mb file that won't take NEARLY as long to boot as VMS for
testing purposes. HTTP://www.netbsd.org.

Regards,

Jeff


In <3BD9B799.6C351149_at_aurora.regenstrief.org>, on 10/26/01
   at 02:20 PM, Gunther Schadow <gunther_at_aurora.regenstrief.org> said:

>Well,

>it still doesn't work. I booted again VMS from TK (takes hours) trying
>various combinations of hardware and no success. I have given the RA90 a
>device address of 1. I have tried it on both the KDB50 and the KDM70
>without success. Now I am wondering whether the SDI cable crossover
>issue is the problem? But why can Geoff run his RA90 in the basement of
>his 6000?
>The specifications clearly say that you can do this:

>KDB50---->VAXbulkhead---->SA800bulkhead---->RA90

>and Geoff does this

>KDB50---->VAXbulkhead---->RA90.

>So, the swapping issue seems more complicated than just
>an uneven number of SDI cables! But I did exactly what
>Geoff did! Or did he do it differently? How? May be there
>are two sorts of SDI cables with or without cross-over?

>Whether or not I have the disk drive connected, the KDB90
>shows the red LEDs as

> B - blink
> o - off
> X - on
> o - off

>which according to the manual is what it should be. The KDB50 shows this
>pattern as soon as it's being initialized by VMS. However, VMS never
>detects any actual drive. So how could I possibly test this link between
>KDB50 and drive. It could be any of this:

>- KDB50 SDI interface damaged but in a way that is not
> detected by the self-test
>- KDB50 backplane cabling not screwed on tightly enough
>- SDI cabling broken
>- SDI cabling mismatched (crossover issue)
>- RA90 SDI interface damaged but in a way that is not
> detected by the self-test

>Is there any resident test that will check the drive/host
>interaction without requiring me to wait for another VMS
>boot cycle. Each attempt at rewiring and rebooting costs me
>about one hour for the VMS to boot from TK again so I need
>to keep this minimal.

>Is there any remote chance someone has a diagnostic tape
>where these things could be tested more thorroughly? I'd
>very keenly interested in such diagnosis tapes for KDB50/
>RA90, and KLESI/TU81 (because that's not being detected
>by VMS either).

>Do we know the pinouts and signal patterns of the SDI (and
>BTW the KLESI) so that I oculd use my scope to detect if
>the wiring is O.K.? I didn't find pinouts and signals in
>the KDB50, RA9x user manual (or the KLESI user manual
>respectively).

>I should be moving one of my HSC90s and SA800 into the
>basement and connect the CI cabling star coupler and
>everything. Last time the HSC's run they were fine ('bout
>a year ago). However, my back still hurts from moving
>the TU81 downstairs and I wanted to give it a rest ...
>no such luck though :-/

>thanks,
>-Gunther





-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey S. Worley
Asheville, NC USA
828-6984887
UberTechnoid_at_Home.com
-----------------------------------------------------------
Received on Fri Oct 26 2001 - 16:46:32 BST

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