mjb@acd4.UUCP ( Mike Bryan ) (10/03/89)
I had posted a couple of messages regarding problems loading our new DECSystem 5400 with Ultrix 3.1 last week. We had thought that the tapes we were getting were bad, but it turns out that's not true. One of the tapes *was* bad, with an incorrect version of Ultrix, but the others were ok. The problem was with the CPU board. Apparently there was a subtle problem which allowed the system to run "most" of the time, but something involving software subset loading triggered the problem. DEC replaced the CPU board Saturday, and we were able to load up the system without incident. Two notes about this. First, the "bad" CPU passed DEC's field diagnostics with no problems. Not too surprising, since it is probably unreasonable to expect diags to find every possible problem. The error was just too subtle for the diags. Sure is aggravating, though. Second, it appears our system was not the only one with this problem. While trying to locate the error, DEC told us that they had tried loading the same 3.1 tape on two different 5400's on the west coast. One system loaded fine, the other barfed much like ours did. These two failures are the only ones I know of. I haven't heard from anyone on the net with similar problems, so perhaps these are just random coincidences. Does anyone else know of any problems with 5400 hardware? Oh well, back to porting to the 5400. Hopefully it will keep running long enough for me to finish! :-) -- Mike Bryan, Applied Computing Devices, 100 N Campus Dr, Terre Haute IN 47802 Phone: 812/232-6051 FAX: 812/231-5280 Home: 812/232-0815 UUCP: uunet!acd4!mjb ARPA: mjb%acd4@uunet.uu.net "Did you make mankind after we made you?" --- XTC, "Dear God"