cirian@einstein.eds.com (Steve Cirian) (01/11/91)
Dear Netters,
I recently purchased Microport's Unix System V Release 3.2.2., and tried to
install it last night, but ran into a major snag. At one point, the
directions said to reboot the machine by pressing <ctl><alt><del>, which I did,
and then the machine rebooted. And rebooted. And rebooted. You get the
picture. I tried booting off of the install floppy again, but it just kept
rebooting also. What happens when the machine is powered on is:
1) The BIOS performs the memory check (640K base, 3072 extended), and passes.
2) The floppy drive (which is empty) is accessed for a few seconds.
3) The hard drive is briefly accessed, and then the system checks the floppy
drive again. I do not get the "Booting Microport SVR3.2" message.
4) After this, the screen goes blank, and the memory check is performed again.
5) This process just repeats again and again.
6) The same thing happens if the install floppy (which is bootable) is in
the floppy drive with the door closed.
After trying all sorts of things, such as reformatting the disk (lowlevel with
a DOS utility), booting from a DOS floppy, doing an fdisk and partitioning for
DOS and doing a highlevel format to making it bootable for DOS, and disabling
the hard drive in CMOS, I found a partial solution after I gave it up for the
night. I rebooted from the UNIX install floppy the next morning, and it came
right up. The installation procedure hung at the reboot phase again, so I just
shut it off for about 10 minutes. It booted right up after I turned it back on,
and I was able to complete the install. I tried rebooting, but the machine just
locks up. If I power it off for about 10 minutes, it will boot every time.
I am able to boot from a DOS floppy (or the hard drive, when I had it
reformatted for DOS) immediately, no problem. The machine was running DOS
for over a year, with no problems whatsoever.
While the system is running, it runs beautifully (I have had it on for over
5 hours straight, no problems). It looks like it will be a great system when I
get this problem figured out. When I try to reboot, I must leave it off for
10 minutes.
I ran all of the hardware diagnostic programs that came with the PC, and Norton,
and checked the CMOS setup. Everything checked out OK. I opened up the case,
and verified all of the dip switches, cable connections, and reseated all the
cards. The processor is pretty hot to the touch (is this normal for a 386/20?).
The configuration: Micronics 386/20 (baby size)
4MB 80ns RAM
Seagate ST138-1 30MB MFM hard drive
Western Digital DW1006-VMM2 HD controller
Teac 1.2MB floppy
NEC Multisync 2A SVGA monitor
Paradise VGA+16 video adaptor
Microport Unix SVR3.2
My speculation is this: Something is overheating (the processor, the hard drive
controller?). After it cools off, the system is OK.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks,
Steve Cirian
cirian@einstein.eds.com
--
Steve Cirian ~ local girl: What does BRMC stand for?
750 Tower Drive ~ Johnny: Black Rebels Motorcycle Club
Troy, MI 48007 ~ local girl: What are you rebelling against?
(313) 265-5738 ~ Johnny: Whattya got?pgd@bbt.se (01/13/91)
In article <244@einstein.eds.com> cirian@einstein.eds.com (Steve Cirian) writes: > >Dear Netters, > >I recently purchased Microport's Unix System V Release 3.2.2., and tried to >install it last night, but ran into a major snag. At one point, the >directions said to reboot the machine by pressing <ctl><alt><del>, which I did, >and then the machine rebooted. And rebooted. And rebooted. You get the >picture. I tried booting off of the install floppy again, but it just kept >rebooting also. What happens when the machine is powered on is: >The configuration: Micronics 386/20 (baby size) You should know that there is a known bug in the Micronics baby size motherboard, cache memory, with the Intel cache controller. It acts in such a way that the warm-boot sometimes (always?) fails. The trick is to never warm-boot, but to always cold-boot. Once it has come into the warm-boot-fail-mode, you have to turn off power to get the machine back to normal again. Sometimes it helps with a short off-on-off, but sometimes you have to wait a minute, or two, to get it back to normal again. Sometimes it even helps by cold-booting a few times. Your problem sounds similar to what we experience with the same model. But here you cannot even warm-boot from dos. Turning off the cache might help. (But how do you turn it on again under unix?) If you have the 20-Mhz, baby-size, cache-memory, motherboard, maybe you can contact Micronics about the problem. I am sure they have made a lot of them, and have a fix for it. If you learn about the fix, I would be happy to hear about it. (We have 5 Micronics motherboards computers, different models, and except for this problem on one of them, they work very nicely. They all worked from the box, and has given no problem since. The oldest has been running a 24-hour a day unix system for over 2 years, without a single failure.) P.Garbha (pgd@compuram.bbt.se)
det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG (Derek E. Terveer) (01/14/91)
cirian@einstein.eds.com (Steve Cirian) writes: [Must turn off machine for 10 minutes before rebooting unix] >My speculation is this: Something is overheating (the processor, the hard drive > controller?). After it cools off, the system is OK. Sounds to me like something is wrong with the cmos configuration for unix. If the battery is low/deadish, perhaps turning off power for 10 minutes allows the battery to discharge enough that the cmos resets to some default values of some sort and allows your system to reboot. Then power being restored allows the cmos to get changed back to some other values that prevent unix from being booted? Sounds crazy, but you *might* want to check your cmos battery. -- Derek "Tigger" Terveer det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG - MNFHA, NCS - UMN Women's Lax, MWD I am the way and the truth and the light, I know all the answers; don't need your advice. -- "I am the way and the truth and the light" -- The Legendary Pink Dots