Computing.Net - boot problems

Subject: boot problems

Original Message

Name: mbroga
Date: January 4, 2005 at 09:42:25 Pacific
Subject: boot problems
OS: VAXserrver 3600
CPU/Ram: not known

Comment:

Hi,
We are using an old Vaxserver 3600. We had a power failure and the battery backup ran down. I cannot boot as dia0 (system disk) is not available. The power up boot sequence gets to 3... and fails with the statement "Normal operation not possible".
I can get a partial boot off another disk but I get the following messages:
% PIA0, DSSI terminator power failure
possible blown fuse
% PIA0, Port is going offline
Anyone have any ideas? I cannot find any fuses anywhere.
Regards,
Mike Broga

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Response Number 1

Name: Hakan Andersson (by HakAnd)
Date: January 4, 2005 at 10:04:53 Pacific
Subject: boot problems

Reply: (edit)

Disk DIA0 means that you are using a disk on
a DSSI-bus. A DSSI-bus needs to be terminated in both ends..... is it ?
How is your system configured ?
Only one box ?
How many disks ?
Have you tried to remove all disks, except DIA0 ?

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Response Number 2

Name: mbroga
Date: January 4, 2005 at 12:25:35 Pacific
Subject: boot problems

Reply: (edit)

Additional information. The system is in one box. There are 7 hard drives. Five in a separate bay and I can see all of those. These are on disk controller 0. If I run "sho dev" at the ">>>" promt disk controller 1 is not shown. It should have 2 disks and a TK70 tape drive.
As far as I can tell all of the terminators are in place.
Regards
Mike

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Response Number 3

Name: Hakan Andersson (by HakAnd)
Date: January 4, 2005 at 13:00:11 Pacific
Subject: boot problems

Reply: (edit)

If you got a HW-problem......it can be difficult to help.
What you can do to get your system up and running, is to replace the disk with unit 0
on the other bus.
What kind of system are we talking about ?
Is it a productionsystem or a hobbyistsystem ? Any HP HW-support-contract ?

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Response Number 4

Name: Bob Gezelter
Date: January 4, 2005 at 13:01:47 Pacific
Subject: boot problems

Reply: (edit)

Mike,
Ok, for starters, I am a bit suspicious about power. You say that you have two cabinets. Can you verify that the second cabinet powered up?
Also, is anything else amiss. Sudden power downs are always a potential for hardware problems. Digital engineered things very well, but I have seen some strange problems creep in.
At one client last year, a machine (in this case a MV 3400) developed a flakey power supply after essentially a decade of reliable operation. In this case, it manifested as a series of unexpected Machine Checks.
What does the console show when you display devices?
- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

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Response Number 5

Name: Hakan Andersson (by HakAnd)
Date: January 4, 2005 at 13:10:07 Pacific
Subject: boot problems

Reply: (edit)

The reason I ask is that I used to work in the VMS Support Team at Digital/Compaq/HP.
Even though I worked with SW-support, our
databases were helpful when searching for
HW-errormessages.
Can't do any searches anymore.....just try and error/success

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