Many thanks to everyone who responded to both of my posts concerning this
installation, and my apologies for not being able to summarize before now;
I had nothing to report. My last post is attached.
The problem seems to have stemmed from 3.2C, or at least my copy of 3.2C,
which gave me the same error message every time I tried to install it:
trap: invalid memory read access from kernel mode
Thank you, Dr. Blinn, for explaining what it meant:
"...it means that the kernel tried to read memory from a location that was
not valid, and and the hardware caused a trap into the kernel error code,
and the error code realized it was an invalid memory read access from
kernel mode and panic-d the kernel. This can happen due to faulty
hardware, or it can happen due to an unsupported and untested
configuration, or it can happen due to a simple bug in the kernel."
My hard drive and CD-ROM drive didn't seem faulty, the rest of the
computer was brand new, and I checked the SCSI bus from end to end, tried
different jumper settings, etc. with no luck. (I did have a termination
error, which was easily fixed.)
Finding myself out of alternatives, I tried to downgrade the firmware,
thinking that maybe the newer firmware didn't work with the older OS
version. To my surprise, the firmware CD that came with 3.2C would not
work; it gave me an error message after the boot. (Unfortunately, I was
too frustruated by that time to make a note of the error.)
The other day I finally fixed the problem (in a way) by installing 4.0,
which worked perfectly on the first try! :D
Thanks again,
a very happy gothy_at_taz.hutch.org
On Wed, 12 May 1999, gothy wrote:
>
> I asked about this problem a while back:
>
> I have an Alphastation 200 4/233 with 32 megs of memory. It came to me
> new, but without a hard drive/OS/CD-ROM drive. I have a copy of DEC UNIX
> 3.2C and attempted to install it on a 1GB SCSI drive, using the original
> CDs. The installation program asks me to choose a hard drive from the
> list.
>
> (One peculiar thing to note: when I first started playing with this
> box, I had two hard drives in it, and only the one in the first slot would
> show up in the list, no matter which drive was in that slot.)
>
> I choose 1, since it's the only one that shows up, and I immediately get
> this error message:
>
> trap: invalid memory read access from kernel mode
>
> Anyone know what this means?
>
> When I first asked about this, Bryan Lavelle was kind enough to respond,
> and suggested that the problem stemmed from the use of a non-DEC CD-ROM
> drive. This is what every Digital employee I've spoken to has told me :)
> so I just tried again with RRD45, the drive that normally would have
> shipped with my machine. The same thing happened.
>
> The other response was from someone who suggested that I run Linux. :) I
> bought this machine specifically to run DEC UNIX. I will try other
> operating systems before I give up and return the machine, but I'd like to
> exhaust all possibilities before that happens.
>
> Some ideas I had/shot down:
>
> The parity on the CD-ROM drive doesn't seem to matter; the error message
> remains the same. There aren't any SCSI ID conflicts, either.
>
> I was able to use the 3rd installation option (System Management, I think
> it's called) to manually copy files from the CD to the hard drive, but
> trying to run osf_boot from the hard drive produces an error message
> saying there's a memory fault.
>
> Four eight-meg SIMMS shipped with the machine. Thinking that the memory
> might be bad, I swapped it for two new sixteen-meg SIMMS from DEC.
> Nothing changed.
>
> The firmware that came with the machine is a later version than the
> upgrade CD that came with 3.2C. Could I benefit by downgrading the
> firmware to the older version? All of the documentation I've gotten my
> hands on so far has said "version x.x or greater," but is this correct?
>
> Could it be that non-DEC hard drives won't function in this machine? One
> of the drives is an IBM, and the other is an HP.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated. I will summarize.
>
>
>
>
Received on Tue Jul 13 1999 - 19:37:30 NZST