Not a summary, because <snif> no-one sent me mail.
Turns out that the problem was caused by the video board. In
these two systems (which I *thought* were identical WRT hardware), one
had a Qvision board with the Compaq chipset, and one had a board (that
used the same drivers) with an AT&T chipset. The AT&T board, while it
worked fine under OSF, apparently didn't like the console switch to NT
mode necessitated by the need to run the ECU floppy, and it froze the
system.
Once I'd finished the ECU refresh on the one system, I brought
it down, we switched cards, and everything was effervescent.
Cheers,
Ole
(Original message follows.)
...And then, I had to go and say:
> From: Ole Craig <olc_at_freya.cs.umass.edu>
> Subject: ACK! Firmware update broke AXP150 - can't run ECU
> To: alpha-osf-managers_at_ornl.gov
>
> Ok, I have two AXP 150's acting as fileservers for a lab full of
> M3000-300's and DecStations. Both *were* running OSF/1 3.0, with a
> firmware rev of 1.3 and PALcode OSF version 1.35.
>
> Preparatory to updating both systems to 3.2D, I attempted to
> upgrade the firmware rev to 2.2. On one machine it worked perfectly,
> and I proceeded to update to 3.2 and from thence to 3.2D. (And a
> partridge in a pear tree..)
>
> On the other, everything worked fine up until I tried to run
> the ECU: I power-cycled it, the console came up knowing that it needed
> to refresh the EISA information, and passed all of its self-tests. It
> asked:
>
> Invoking Eisa Config Utility. Insert System Config floppy. Continue (Y/N)?
>
> I answered, Y<ret>... And the system just sat there. Didn't
> clear the screen, didn't respond to further KB input, the halt button
> doesn't do anything... The only way to get out of this state is to
> power-cycle it. Interesting note: the same thing happens when you set
> the OS_TYPE to NT and try to reboot. (Except it just completes the
> self-tests and hangs, without making any remarks about the ECU or the
> SC floppy.)
>
> I tried the firmware update three times, and each time the
> results were the same. On the other system (virtually identical,
> purchased from DEC at the same time, etc) it popped itself into NT
> mode, ran the program from the floppy, and everything was
> effervescent.
>
> I'm not an NT person, and our NT resource (more or less) has
> never worked with NT on anything but a straight PC platform. Does
> anyone have any ideas? I have a call logged to DEC, but the software
> guy said firmware is really hardware and hardware support has expired
> for this machine, so I'm not too sanguine about help from that
> direction...
-Ole ("Scar") SI NON CONFECTVS NON REFICIAT
"Did you expect the best of all possible words?" asked Tom candidly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Ole Craig * olc_at_cs.umass.edu * (413)545-9674 voice, (413)545-1249 fax
CS Computing Facility * University of Massachusetts
<
http://www.cs.umass.edu/~olc/> for public key (or use finger)
Received on Fri Aug 30 1996 - 16:41:55 NZST