[comp.sys.3b1] dead 3b1 assist?

thad@btr.BTR.COM (Thaddeus P. Floryan) (06/17/91)

In article <1991Jun17.040842.13298@mel.dit.csiro.au> hal@ditmela.mel.dit.csiro.au (Harold A. Miller) writes:

| We have a dead 3b1.  That may or may not be the "norm", I'm not used to the
| machine.  In any event, the video is gone, and there isn't anyone around
| (of whom we're aware) who can fix it at a price that makes it worth the
| fixing.  In the mean time, the hard drive is full of stuff that would be
| nice to recover.  There is a set of backup floppies, too.
| [...]

Assuming it's only the video that has "died", you should be able to plug a
terminal into the serial port (using the pinouts shown below), login, and do
whatever recovery you deem necessary; this is assuming the /etc/inittab has
an entry to spawn a getty on /dev/tty000 ... if not, then someone'll have to
boot with the floppy boot disk and change the /etc/inittab .... not very easy
if you cannot see echoes (on the monitor) of what you're typing.

Good luck!

Pinouts for a terminal to be attached to /dev/tty000:

	terminal	serial port

	  (2)--------------(3)
	  (3)--------------(2)
	  (7)--------------(7)

	           +-------(6)
	           |
	           +-------(8)
	           |
	           +------(20)

You "may" need to do a similar {6-8-20} jumpering at your terminal's end
depending how your terminal is optioned.

Thad Floryan [ thad@btr.com (OR) {decwrl, mips, fernwood}!btr!thad ]