[comp.misc] Convergent Technologies - help needed!!

bill@bilver.UUCP (Bill Vermillion) (06/30/90)

In article <mlp46b@unify.uucp> dgh@unify.uucp (David Harrington) writes:
>In article <16@mas.UUCP> smarc@mas.UUCP (Marc Siegel) writes:
>>
>>I have a CT MiniFrame at one of my remote sites. It locks up
>>constantly. I got hold of somebody who was familiar with the
>>version of CTIX I'm running (CTIX 3.20).
 
>Painful memory time: does anyone remember the Megaframe?

Now I have a question.  I was called into a site a week or so ago, and there
was a box called the MightyFrame (Is that correct).  Running CTIX.

Have OS manuals but absolutely nothing on hardware.  What is is comparable to
in hardware performance, and what is it's hardware.   

bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - UUCP: uunet!tarpit!bilver!bill
                      : bill@bilver.UUCP

dave@oldcolo.UUCP (Dave Hughes) (07/06/90)

Ah, the CT Miniframe. Whatever the Machiavellian schemes Convergent
may have had for it, it actually was useful to some of us who
were interested in makingthe transition from one-line BBSs to
multiline small subscription conferencing system, without buying
Ft Knox. Ran the Old Colorado City Electronic Cottage service for
5 years on 10 ports with few problems. About an un-supported a
machine as there ever was, so strictly do it yourself. Then a
second one, (the 'plus' model) for a client, and it ran fine.

But it had one peculiarity which now bedevils me. Sometimes it
just wouldn't boot on any of 2-3 stand-alone boot disks after
a power outage crash, unless I ran the Diagnostic disks, which
did nothing but run, then boot again on one of those odd-ball
600k floppy drives. Long since having moved to 386 SCO Xenix
machines for our service, I continued to use the CTs however,
as back end, RS232 connected machines doing things only a small
Sys 5 would do and Xenix wouldn't. 

But a few months ago an electrical storm brought both to their
knees, and I can't for the life of me get the stand alones to
boot the system so I can fsck the hard drives and keep truckin
without a total reinstallation. The standalones start to boot,
click along advancing on the floppy about a third of the way,
then sputter, and restart again by themselves. Such behavior
used to be associated with a change on what was attached to the 
RS232 ports. So much as remove one cable which had been attached
to a port, and it would never boot. Replace it and it would.

Now any suggestions would be appreciated, for I really have too
much to do to start all over with them, but I also hate to
have the lovable little critters sit there stone cold when there
are some uses for them yet.