[Info-vax] rx4640 fails to boot OpenVMS 8.4

[Colin Butcher]

Well, you could physically pull the drive from the rx2600 and try it in the 
rx4640.

You could also try booting the EFI offline diagnostics from a USB flash 
drive and check that the system is OK.

I generally use Nero to burn CDs/DVDs, but you can also burn CDs/DVDs with 
OpenVMS V8.3 and later on both Alpha and IA64 using LDdriver container files 
and the COPY/RECORD DCL command.

As a neat trick, you'll probably find that IDE DVD writers will work on an 
Alpha with an IDE CD drive. I've successfully swapped the IDE CD drive in an 
ES40 for a TDK 880N CD/DVD writer and the results are usable in IA64, Alpha 
and VAX machines. I also successfully swapped the CD drive on a DS10 for the 
CD/DVD writer out of a rx2660. So, I can burn VMS CDs/DVDs on both Alpha and 
IA64 and the results are readable on other machines.

Beware that a bootable DVD needs a 2048 byte sector size and a bootable CD 
needs a 512 byte sector size for SCSI and 2048 byte sector size for IDE - it 
has to be the native sector size for the media.

If burning from a LD container file, you'll need to make the VMS ODS file 
system within the LDdriver image files have appropriate block sizes and 
cluster factors (4 is a good number = 2048 bytes).

You could also make a bootable IA64 VMS on a USB flash drive (set the 
WLKSYSDSK SYSGEN parameter to 1 once you're done) and try booting that. 
You'll need a running IA64 box to be able to do that though.

I've managed to boot IA64 VMS V8.3-1H1 from both USB flash drives and USB 
external hard drives.

Worth checking the firmware versions for not just the base box, but all the 
IO adapters as well. The IA64 firmware update process usually needs you to 
do each component individually, typically via USB flash drive to which you 
copy the firmware update files.

-- 
Cheers, Colin.
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Legacy = Stuff that works properly!