no boot console after firmware upgrade

From: Sam Matson <matsons_at_magellan.Colorado.EDU>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 12:49:27 -0600 (MDT)

Greetings Tru64'ers,

I decided to upgrade the firmware on our AlphaStation 250 this morning in
order to step up from 4.0D to 4.0E (DUnix or Tru64 Unix).

I had to make a floppy for the upgrade because our CD drive has been
flaky. Here are the steps I took:

Downloaded Firmware 5.3 from
ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/Alpha/firmware
The resulting file was called: as200_v6_9.exe

Downloaded the mkbootfirm.tar and untarred it

Low level formatted a floppy
fddisk -fmt /dev/rfd0a

Ran mkbootfirm with the following command
./mkbootfirm as200_v6_9.exe | dd of=/dev/rfd0c bs=64k

NOTE: I deliberately ignored the instructions and did not rename the
as200 file to fwupdate.exe (I think this may be the problem)

All of the rest of the firmware update seemed to go fine, but now when the
machine is powered on the HDDs spin and nothing comes up on the monitor.

Is there a way to undo this firmware upgrade and try again? (following the
directions?)

I have checked the video card, monitor, and hard drives for failure (by
installing them on another machine) and all check out fine.

Thanks for any pointers. I will summarize after my problem is solved.

Sam Matson
________________________________________________________________________
Sam Matson Dept. of Chemical Engineering
University of Colorado - Boulder (303) 492-8547 office
matsons_at_ucsu.colorado.edu (303) 492-4341 fax
http://optimal.colorado.edu/~matson/
Received on Tue Apr 13 1999 - 18:52:12 NZST

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