tjones%sunset.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Ray Jones) (05/29/90)
Some friends and I recently acquired a DG Nova 3, with 10 Meg Disk Platters
and ~32k onboard ram. Don't ask me why we did this. Probably because we're
stupid. Anyway, the problem is, we can't get it started.
Suposedly the previous owners spent about a year getting it going and
finally got it to run a copy of Word Perfect they grabbed somewhere, but we
can't do a thing with it. It is a front panel switch bootstrap loader,
something we've all been lucky enough not to come in contact with until now.
We'd like to get the beast (Actually we've named it BERTHA.) started, but
nothing we've tried has worked.
(Please no RTFM responses. We tried that. Several times. All the way
through.)
tjones@hell.utah.edu
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Email: tjones@hell.utah.edu
Login Name: Thouis Jones In Real Life: tjones
My opinions are my own, but then again, no one else wants them.terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr) (05/30/90)
In article <1990May29.025253.15707@hellgate.utah.edu>, tjones%sunset.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Ray Jones) writes: > Some friends and I recently acquired a DG Nova 3, with 10 Meg Disk Platters > and ~32k onboard ram. Don't ask me why we did this. Probably because we're > stupid. Anyway, the problem is, we can't get it started. > We'd like to get the beast (Actually we've named it BERTHA.) started, but > nothing we've tried has worked. Ok, you asked for it 8-} You've got front panel switches in groups of 3 (octal), right? Your 10Mb disk should either be a 4234 disk (Diablo 44) drive, or a 6045 (I think that's right, it's been years) DG-built disk. In any event, it's device code 33. You need to set the front panel switches to 100033 (left switch up, middle ones down, 5 right switches UUDUU) and lift Program Load. This should start a boot sequence to your disk drive. If all is well, you'll get asked for the date and time (at least you will if you're running RDOS or a derivative). The prompt is "R;", believe it or not. If that doesn't get you going, look at the front panel lights. If you don't have a RUN state, or the lights just blip and die when you do the program load, you are probably missing some boards. Check for empty slots in the backplane. As I recall, slot 0 (not really a slot) was the power supply, 1 & 2 were the CPU, 3 was MAP, 4-something were memory, and the rest are peripheral controllers. Empty slots before the last used one must have 2 grant jumpers installed, but I don't recall exactly where... The useless things I remember... Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing terry@spcvxa.bitnet St. Peter's College, US terry@spcvxa.spc.edu (201) 915-9381