jkg@gatech.edu (Jim Greenlee) (08/31/89)
I have several 3B2/310s that are exhibiting all sorts of weird problems. I depend on these machines for a couple of classes I teach, but they are not under any sort of maintenance, so I get to fix them when they break. Not having any sort of technical manuals makes this difficult when something goes wrong. Any help you net folks can give me will be appreciated. All the machines are leftovers from the massive donations that AT&T made a few years ago. They have 30 MByte CDC disks, 2 Meg of RAM, an NI card, and at least one PORTS card. We are running SVR3.0 and use WIN TCP/IP 1.0 for our networking support. We recently bought SVR3.2, which I would like to install (once I get everything working, of course :-). I currently have 3 completely working 3B2s and various parts of others that I am trying to make into working ones - I think I have enough parts to get two more up and running (if I can get all the parts to work, that is). One of the working machines is being used to swap out and test the parts of the others. I have one hard drive that generates a SANITY FAILURE when I try to boot from it. I have a copy of the MTCE utilities, so I think I can take care of that one. I have two other drives that do absolutely nothing. They spin up, the machine passes diagnostics, and then nothing. I can boot from the floppy drive, but that's it. I am going to try idtools on them, unless somebody has a better idea. I have used idtools a couple of times to re-format hard disks, but I don't know much about it otherwise (no docs, of course). The hard drive problems are not the most vexing ones, however. I have two machines that were working at one time, but stopped suddenly for no apparent reason. When I try to boot them, the power light comes on and stays on, but the diagnostic light goes "flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash...pause" and repeats this pattern over and over. Somebody here at Tech who has worked rather extensively with the 3B2s suggested that maybe the boot ROMs were bad. I swapped out the ROMs with known good ones, but nothing changed. I took one of the machines apart, removed all the memory and peripheral cards, and decided to start plugging things in until it broke. With nothing in it but motherboard and floppy disk, it did a SELF CHECK, accessed the disk drive once, and then the power light went out, but the diagnostic light stayed lit continuously. I plugged in two 1 Meg RAM cards and got the same thing. If I press the RESET button, then the power light comes back on and the diagnostic light begins flashing as before. The DIAGNOSTICS won't run at all. I tried plugging in a few periperal cards, but nothing seemed to work. At one point, I got a CONFIGURATION FAILURE error (FW-05, I think). I know the that the firmware errors are described in one of the manuals, but I didn't get time to look it up (had to give a final exam today :-). This error only occurred once, so it might have been an anomaly. At any rate, I'm kind of stuck here unless I can get some reasonable technical docs for these machines. I'd really hate to scrap them because they are doing pretty much what I ask of them (plus they were free :-). I have a couple of interesting ideas on how I would like to utilize them, so if anybody can help me out with these problems, then I'd appreciate it. Jim Greenlee -- Jim Greenlee - Instructor, School of ICS, Georgia Tech jkg@gatech.edu Jryy, abj lbh'ir tbar naq qbar vg! Whfg unq gb xrrc svqqyvat jvgu vg hagvy lbh oebxr vg, qvqa'g lbh?!
thk@uxrd15.UUCP (Tom Kiermaier) (08/31/89)
In article <19137@gatech.edu> jkg@gatech.UUCP (Jim Greenlee) writes: >reason. When I try to boot them, the power light comes on and stays on, but >the diagnostic light goes "flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash...pause" >and repeats this pattern over and over. Somebody here at Tech who has worked >rather extensively with the 3B2s suggested that maybe the boot ROMs were bad. >I swapped out the ROMs with known good ones, but nothing changed. If the LED is really pulsing 6 times then you've got a very strange machine. Below are the usual LED pulse failure indicators: PULSE CAUSE ----- ------------------- 1 Unknown cause, rare 2 Problem with the CPU 3 Problem with firmware (ROMS) 4 Problem with RAM 5 Problem with DUART Tom Kiermaier
pag@tcsc3b2.tcsc.com (Philip A. Gross) (09/15/89)
Graham Glen (Technical Manager) <netsys!pyrdc!uunet!qukmips!graham> writes: >> >> reason. When I try to boot them, the power light comes on and stays on, but >> the diagnostic light goes "flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash...pause" >> and repeats this pattern over and over. Somebody here at Tech who has worked >> rather extensively with the 3B2s suggested that maybe the boot ROMs were bad. >> I swapped out the ROMs with known good ones, but nothing changed. >> [...stuff deleted...] >> press the RESET button, then the power light comes back on and the diagnostic >> light begins flashing as before. The DIAGNOSTICS won't run at all. >> >I have had exactly this problem before. In my case, I swapped parts from a >known working system until I had replaced the entire machine, and it still >would not work. The reason I found in the end was that the cable from the >terminal to the console port had got damaged, the machine was not seeing a >complete set of hardware handshaking lines, and so refused to play ball. >Try swapping the console cable for another one which you know works, and >also put a breakout box on the terminal to check whether all the necessary >handshaking lines are being generated. It may cure the problem. >Graham Just got back from vacation and stumbled across this problem. I am not sure if you have had any worth while replies but here is my 2 cents. Graham is correct here in stating that their may be a problem with the 3B2 communicating with the console. We have this same problem crop up occasionally when we need to reboot the system, it has always been remedied with a simple press of the RESET button. However, if you are getting SELF CHECK, then console wiring is not the problem. If you are still having trouble with identifying the problem, below is a list of the what the flashing diagnostic led means. These are quoted from the AT&T 3B2 Computer Maintenance Reference Manual. 1 pulse Unknown problem. The console may be wired incorrectly or there may be other trouble not revealed by LED pulses. 2 pulses Problem with the CPU. 3 pulses Problem with firmware (ROMS). 4 pulses Problem with RAM. 5 pulses Problem with the DUART. A suggestion that is made later in the manual is to push down firmly on all socketed components on the system board as well as reseating all of the boards. Heat generated from the processor's will often cause chips to "creap" out of their sockets and then if the system is moved, a chip may break electrical contact with its socket. If none of these measures work, then you may have to dust off your wallet. =============================================================================== Philip A. Gross The Computer Solution Co., Inc. Voice: 804-794-3491 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- INTERNET: pag@tcsc3b2.tcsc.com USENET: tcsc3b2!pag UUCP: tcsc3b2!pag (804)794-1514 ATTMAIL: attmail!tcsc3b2!pag ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The opinions expressed here are strictly mine and nobody elses. << I haven't heard what I have to say about that yet. >> :-)