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

[P. Sture]

In article 
<f6585033-10a5-4106-b80e-a31d6465f795 at x38g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
 John Wallace <johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> 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.

What I'll add to that is that you can use unzip on miatasg.exe to 
extract the contents.

-- 
Paul Sture