dan@idis.UUCP (Dan Strick) (09/26/83)
We have DEC maintenance on our VAX 11/780. During the past half year or so our local sevice people have tried (and failed) on at least four occasions to upgrade our (console?) system to "rev 7." In the past, their diagnostics always failed after the upgrade. This time the system passed their diagnostics but got a double error halt during unix startup (after system sizes are typed but before the operating system type and amount of available main memory is typed). Other 4bsd systems on our campus have been successfully upgraded to "rev 7" but they all run 4.1bsd. We still run 4.0bsd. Can anyone shed any light on the matter. In particular, does anyone know of any incompatibility between 4.0 and rev 7 or does anyone know of another 4.0bsd system that has upgraded to rev 7? Dan Strick University of Pittsburgh [mcnc!decvax]!idis!dan (412) 624-5218
ptw@vaxine.UUCP (P. T. Withington) (09/29/83)
We have a 4.1/780 with rev. 7 console and occasionally get double cpu error halts. If we don't get a halt, the boot dies with a format error trying to read /. These problems go away after running DEC disk diagnostics. Therefore my *guess* is that something is not reset in the disk controller by boot. I would appreciate any light others can shed on this, since I have not had a chance to dig into it yet. (Our disk is an RP-07, we also have the new memory controller.)
chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (10/01/83)
We had trouble recently (last night that is) with something that
sounds very similar to what you described (?CPU DBL-ERR HALT, and
flaky "format errors" when booting off RP-0X disks). However, we
only have console rev 6. Our problem was caused by the ...
Translation Buffer! Apparently when this board goes flaky, the
only way to find out for sure is to examime the CPU ID registers
from the console after the double error halt. You might try running
lots of memory tests, and see if you can get it to happen that way.
So, maybe you don't have to yell at DEC.
--
Real: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci
UUCP: {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet: chris@umcp-cs
ARPA: chris%umcp-cs@UDel-Relay