clear@actrix.co.nz (Charlie Lear) (09/15/90)
Thanks to the people who've mailed me so far about the second-hand 3B2/400 that I obtained for running a public access Usenet site. Well, the worst thing occurred: after getting most of the software ported onto it, we noticed a few problems on Thursday. The system wouldn't let you log in. Example: bearcave!Console_login: root password: login: Hmmm. The system wasn't recognising passwords. Wouldn't even let you log in as uucp or anything (which don't have passwords yet). Time for a reboot. Up it comes, except now it doesn't even ask for a password: bearcave!Console_login: root bearcave!Console_login: Argh! Reboot again. SELF-CHECK DIAGNOSTICS SYSTEM FAILURE: Refer to your System Administrator Utilities Guide Which, of course, says zilch about anything concerned with System Failures. Try to get it into firmware mode, and it simply doesn't want to know. One piece of email that was in my box this morning from Joe Zeigler at AT&T who advises that firmware mode requires space or no parity. We've been running the terminals at 7E1 (don't ask why, we bought it that way) and this may be a cause of not being able to get into monitor mode. Doesn't fix the system failure though. Anyways, the machine is being examined this weekend by a very supportive fellow from the local AT&T distributors. Hopefully he'll find the problem. Hopefully it will be minor, like a shot battery. I'll be sending email to everyone who replied to my original post. I'll find out on Monday whether I've just blown a couple of thousand bucks. Other than that, I discovered there are around 12 3B systems in New Zealand, none of which I've made contact with yet and none of which (so Olivetti tell me) are running anything more recent than Sys V 3.0. Keep the email coming! Regards Charlie Lear ( clear@actrix.co.nz )