jg@umbriel.esd.sgi.com (John Giannandrea) (09/10/90)
dac@ukc.ac.uk (David Clear) writes: |> I am having problems getting the Inmos B008 TRAM motherboard to work. On |> running the iserver program, I receive the message: |> Error - iserver - unable to write byte <n> to the boot link. |> The manual says that this error message could be caused by the object module |> being in the incorrect format. This does not help me. The message means that the transputer has stopped accepting and acknowledging the bytes that the server is trying to send it. There are several reasons why this might happen. 1. The server is not actually talking to a tranputer. There are several possibilities here, including the server having the wrong idea of the B008's address in the PC. The address is set by switches on the board and by an environment variable or command line switch in the server, unless you have a DOS device driver for the B008 in which case there are configuration options in CONFIG.SYS 2. The boot file you are trying to send is not a transputer boot file at all, or is corrupt in some way. This is unlikely to be the case if it just came out of a compiler/configuration tool :-) 3. The "bootstrap" (the initial few bytes of code at the front of the bootfile which is executed first to load in and jump to the rest of the code) has failed to work properly. For example, some bootstraps look for an environment variable (IBOARDSIZE) to find out how big the root transputer's memory is. If the variable is set to the wrong size the bootstrap may crash. 4. You are loading a network and the network topology does not match the "wiring" that you described to a static configurer. 5. You have bad hardware. If the number <n> in the message is small then you are likely to be having troubles with the first bytes of code on the root transputer. Suspect 1 or 3. If the number is quite large (a reasonable proportion of your boot file size) and you only have one processor then suspect RAM size problems. If you have a network and <n> is quite large then suspect 4. There are several tools that can help debug your problem. A "worm" program will map out your network, including C004 connections, and allow you to check your network topology. A memory test program can help you find bad hardware. INMOS (in the US at least) has a set of programs that do this called the "Checkout Programs". Even when using a static configurer, it should be possible to improve the server to give a better message when the bootstrap fails to load a network. Given knowledge about how the configurer works, the server should be able to pinpoint the processor or connection that is missing. I guess everyone has the source of the server. If someone at INMOS was willing to release the gory details of the configuration magic...
dac@ukc.ac.uk (David Clear) (09/10/90)
In article <1990Sep10.074616.22038@odin.corp.sgi.com> jg@umbriel.esd.sgi.com (John Giannandrea) writes: [ in reference to my B008 problem] > >5. You have bad hardware. > Thanks to you and all the other helpful people who replied to my posting. I received a program which tests the transputers and, using this, and doing some more tests, it turns out that the T425 TRAM board I had was bad. Luckily, a bit of redesign means that the absense of this TRAM will not be significant. Thanks again to all those who helped. Dave. -- % cc life.c | David Clear <dac@ukc.ac.uk> % a.out | Local Area Networks, Computing Laboratory, Segmentation fault (core dumped) | University of Kent, Canterbury, England.