[Info-vax] rx4640 fails to boot OpenVMS 8.4

[Paul Wuerrer]

Hello,

I recently acquired a pretty nice rx4640 and thanks to the hobbyist program I also got provided with an image of OpenVMS 8.4 for Itanium.
My problem is that the machine refuses to boot from the burned media. I've burned the DVD twice, one using wodim on Linux, the other one using CdBurner XP on Windows.

When I try to boot from the linux-burned one absolutely nothing happens after "Starting: Internal Bootable DVD" - I left the system running for several hours with no success.
And the DVD burned from Windows keeps giving me strange errors, the MP reports "BOOT_IVT_OFFSET trap taken" and "system firmware error.
The last time I tried the EFIalso reported "interrupt with ic bit clear" and "ext int taken, number in ext PE.

What's also strange is that I can't get the system to boot from the 4.29 firmware CD I downloaded from HP. This one was also burned with CdBurner XP, the EFI always aborts with "not found" and doesn't seem to map the drive.

I suspect that either the burners I used don't work well with EFI-formatted ISOs or the DVD drive in the 4640 might be failing. Unfortunately I can't really determine if it's the drive because my other machine (a rx2600 I got with the 4640) is waiting for new PSUs at the moment.

The firmware on the 4640 is E.03.30(MP), 04.05(BMC), 05.48(EFI) and 04.29(System)

Could somebody please help me pinpoint these errors and also give me advice on a EFI-compatible burn program (if that's the source of the errors)?

Regards,
Paul Wuerrer
<pwuerrer (at) lavabit (dot) com>