From: Rodent of Unusual Size (Ken.Coar@Golux.Com)
Date: Tue Oct 23 2007 - 09:43:12 EDT
My thanks to all who have replied so far. Here is my original
post, followed by the summary so far:
---- I've disinterred a PWS500au (Digital Personal Workstation 500au, an Alpha processor I think was called 'Miata') from a pile of systems, and I want to get it running again. (It used to run, anyway.) Unfortunately, I'm having trouble getting to the console >>> (SRM?) prompt. On power-up I get a couple of blurbs about BIOS, and then it goes to a solid blue screen with the cursor blinking in the upper left corner. It stays like that indefinitely. Nothing on the keyboard seems to have any effect. If I unplug the keyboard, I'll get some 'kbd test 6 failed' messages but that's it. If I try powering up without the keyboard, I get some 'kbd test 4 failed' messages after the blue screen, and then part of the countdown and then the >>> prompt. Which I can't use, since I can't persuade the system to acknowledge the [re]connexion of the keyboard. Now perhaps the fact that I'm going through a ConnectGear 8-port KVM might have something to do with it, although I don't think so. It's clearly seeing the keyboard through the KVM, since it gritches when I disconnect it. It's like it's in some endless keyboard-test loop. ---- The consensus is that the system is probably set to use the serial console, and that I should hook up a terminal to it, figure out the speed, interrupt the boot with CTRL/C, and 'set console graphics'. Unfortunately, I haven't yet been able to verify this. One of my respondents suggested disconnecting the disks so that the boot will definitely not continue out of console mode; I'm doing that now. The 'terminal' I'm using is the serial port on my Linux laptop. Trying to figure out the speed using minicom or any other standard tool has been a right bugger, requiring lots of repetitive typing, so I wrote a Perl script to cycle through most of the possible speeds, setting the Linux serial port to them, sending a string to it, and listening for a response. If no response, then move on to the next speed. Since this hasn't turned up anything yet, I'm not sure it's working; if/when I get it working, anyone can have it if they like. I'll post a true summary when I've got a successful answer to this. In the meantime, I'm *still* trying to find out if there's a 'reset to factory defaults' mechanism.. and what those defaults would be if so. :-) -- #ken P-)} Ken Coar, Sanagendamgagwedweinini http://Ken.Coar.Org/ Author, developer, opinionist http://Apache-Server.Com/ "Millennium hand and shrimp!"
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