karl@tobago.cgd.ucar.edu (08/14/90)
The answer was to unplug the battery backup inside the 6150 system unit for an hour. After doing this, it booted up fine from the DIAGS Diskettes. The battery backup unit is inside the front cover. There is little blue and white cable. Just pulling it straight down unplugs it. It has three pins that only go one way, when plugging it back in. Here was the original posting- >I stupidly changed the NVRAM in my RT to boot from who-knows-what. How do > I get the thing to boot from the diags diskette in the floppy > drive? Upon power up, or <CTL><ALT><PAUSE>, some numbers flash on > the LED, then it beeps and hangs with the LED readout saying 29. > Any clues? Please email and I will summarize. Another solution was to try the keyboard sequence <CTL-ALT-A>. This was supposed to change the values in NVRAM to boot from the floppy. I could not get this to work. I think I have learned that error code 29 means it is trying to IPL from something. It appears there are a large number of keyboard sequences that may be used on the RT. I am including the following message, which was excerpted from Francis Demierre, in the hopes that it might be usefull. Organization: Hasler AG, CH-3000 Berne 14, Switzerland Unix Mail: francis@hslrswi.UUCP 1. Set the boot device with one of: Ctrl + Alt + a : Updates NVRAM for diskette device #1 Ctrl + Alt + b : Updates NVRAM for diskette device #2 Ctrl + Alt + c : Updates NVRAM for fixed-disk device #1 Ctrl + Alt + d : Updates NVRAM for fixed-disk device #2 Ctrl + Alt + e : Updates NVRAM for fixed-disk device #3 2. Reboot your machine with: Ctrl + Alt + Pause: Perform a soft re-IPL Reboots from the device specified with the Ctrl + Alt + (a,b,c,d,e) combination. Other special sequences are: Ctrl+Alt+Home: Performs a re-IPL of the virtual machine Ctrl+Alt+Pad6: Performs a power on reset re-IPL (cold start) Ctrl+Alt+Pad7: Performs a dump of all real memory Ctrl+Alt+Pad8: Performs a dump of selected area of memory Note for the two seq. above: 1. if the "c6" code already displays, insert a dump diskette and press the sequence. 2. if you want to initiate a dump at any time, press this sequence (c6 appears), insert a diskette and issue the sequence again. Ctrl+Alt+Pad4: Invokes the VRM debugger Ctrl+Alt+End: Performs a dump of the first virtual machine Ctrl+Alt+Del: Performs an IPL of the optional coprocessor Ctrl+Alt+Action: Exits from the coprocessor mode (after a 'pcstart') Alt+Action: Change the active display screen to the next virtual terminal (if any). (after an 'open' command or 'pcstart', etc...) Shift+Action: Change to the previous virtual terminal. Ctrl+Action: Change to the command virtual terminal (if defined) Thanks to: Dan Ehrlich Chuck Karish karish@mindcraft.com Francis Demierre <francis@hslrswi.UUCP> aesnet:moody@moody.austin.ibm.com Paul Chamberlain thanks again, Karl Sierka -- Karl Sierka sierka@ncar.ucar.edu 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80301 (303)-497-1338 Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not those of my employer. "Can GOD write a program so complicated that even He/She can't debug it?"