[Info-vax] PWS 600au lost its memory: CMOS reverts to AlphaBIOS

[John Wallace]

On Sep 8, 6:45 pm, Ken Fairfield <ken.fairfi... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sep 6, 12:53 pm, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae... at gsi.de> wrote:
>
> > Ken Fairfield schrieb:
>
> > > Marc, is the battery in a "holder" or do I need to unsolder
> > > the old and re-solder the new one?
>
> > should be easy to locate and replace,
> > assuming a PWS600 is not too different from a PWS500:http://www.gsi.de/~kraemer/COLLECTION/DEC/pws500.html
>
> Thanks, Michael, your pictures make it very clear that
> this will be pretty easy once I get the system out where
> I can work on it.
>
> Unfortunately, while I did pick up a CR2032 over the
> weekend, "Honey-do" projects kept me from doing
> more with the PWS.
>
> Thanks also to Brian and Paul Sture for your
> encouragement.  It's mostly that I wanted to have
> an idea of the scale of the job before I started,
> and any needed parts, precisely because I knew
> I'd be under tie constraints. :-)
>
>    Thanks, Ken

Bit late to the game, sorry, but...

There is a Service Guide for the PWS family which documents the
process of replacing the battery. Removing the motherboard is indeed
part of it and that too is documented in the service guide, though
actually it's not greatly different than anything else based on a
business-PC-class standard (NLX-format?) removable motherboard.

The Service Guide should be findable via
http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/workstations/retired/aseries/index.html
but as is typical with the HP website (and many others) the relevant
link leads to a 404. If someone with the right contacts wants to get
this fixed...

Meanwhile, folks can use their favourite search engine to find a copy
of miatasg.zip or miatasg.exe (the PWS family were codenamed Miata,
iirc). I found a miatasg.zip which appeared to work, at
http://www.cilinder.be/docs/digitalpwsau/?C=M%3BO=A

What you get is a set of web pages which should cover what you need to
know now and probably a whole lot more which you might need one day,
who knows...

Grab now, while stocks last.