[Info-vax] Integrity firmware version vs VMS version docs

[Robert A. Brooks]

On 7/11/2019 8:17 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2019-07-10, Robert A. Brooks <FIRST.LAST at vmssoftware.com> wrote:
>>
>> *that guess is likely on the low side, as I used to develop firmware at HP,
>> after working in VMS Engineering, and did a lot of firmware upgrading.  That
>> number includes upgrading to firmware that was quite buggy, but didn't brick,
>> and allowed a subsequent upgrade.
>>
> 
> Serious question: What happens on Itanium if, on a rare occasion,
> a firmware update, or a power failure at exactly the wrong point,
> _does_ well and truly brick the machine ?

I don't know, because I never saw a bricked system, nor do I remember
any of my firmware-writing colleagues experiencing that problem.

> Is there anything like a JTAG port which a HPE engineer can use to
> install a working version of the firmware ?

For certain platforms, yes.  I wrote firmware for the IA64 i2 blades
and rx2800 iLO, and for the Superdome X enclosure.

The Superdome X definitely had a JTAG interface;  I'm not sure about the iLO.

I never actually *saw* the hardware; I was working remotely in Massachusetts, 
and the systems were in Texas and California.

> Or would the existing onboard recovery process be guaranteed to always
> allow the user to recover back to a working firmware version ?

The Superdome X did have a recovery mechanism to fall back to the last
known working firmware; I don't think most of the lower-end platforms did,
but I'm not sure.

-- 
                  -- Rob