[Info-vax] Alpha Personal Workstation 433au -

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-11-06 20:02:07 +0000, thedavegray at gmail.com said:

> Just got hold of a Digital 433au workstation which apparently has 
> OpenVMS v8 on it, however I cannot get it to book from dka0 as it says 
> "dka0.0.0.1004.0 is not a valid boot block" - "bootstrap failure".
> 
> Is this fixable?
> 
> Also how do I get into the BIOS?  I tried F5, F6 and CTRP-P at boot but 
> it just goes to SRM.  I know there's a graphical BIOS on it because 
> that was what came up when I first booted it and it was set to Windows 
> NT.

That revert-to-AlphaBIOS/ARC behavior usually means the battery is dead.

Alpha firmware used an unfortunate scheme here, and a dead battery 
produces a zero in the console settings memory, and a zero is (also) 
the constant that selects the AlphaBIOS/ARC firmware.

Whoopsies.

> PS - I'm almost certain this was, ahem, pilot error and that I trashed 
> the boot block/sector when "messing" around with the BIOS.

"Harmless signtures" are not.

Previous discussions of Harmless Signatures will be found in the Google 
Groups archives, too.

(Few new discussions of Digital Personal Workstation (DPWS/PWS/etc) 
boxes are arising in recent years; there's a whole lot in the old 
OpenVMS FAQ and in the newsgroup archives.)

Boot a distribution kit via CD-ROM or via OpenVMS installed on another 
disk, and re-run a SET BOOTBLOCK command targeting the volume.  (Or 
invoke WRITEBOOT, if you're into older approaches.)

But I wouldn't do that here.

Scrounge a distribution kit and licenses from the HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist 
program, and wipe and reinstall OpenVMS Alpha.

Existing installs have who-knows-what left around, and it's usually 
saner for all folks involved to treat this like a new system, and start 
over.

Oh, and there are two versions of the Personal Workstation Series boxes 
around, one with the Intel Saturn (SIO) and the other with the Cypress.

"If you are using the Digital Personal Workstation 433au, 500au, and 
600au series systems, you can boot OpenVMS Version 7.3-1 or higher from 
an IDE CD if the controller chip is a Cypress PCI Peripheral 
Controller. You cannot boot OpenVMS on a Digital Personal Workstation 
au series system from an IDE CD with an Intel Saturn I/O (SIO) 82378 
chip in your configuration. You must use a SCSI CD, if the Intel SIO 
chip is present.
To determine which IDE chip you have in your configuration, enter the 
following SRM console command:

SHOW CONFIGURATION
If you see Cypress PCI Peripheral Controller, you can boot OpenVMS.
If you see Intel SIO 82378, you will need to use and boot from a SCSI CD."

If you have the Intel SIO, the IDE does not work with OpenVMS and you 
will have to use a SCSI 512-byte-sector-capable CD-ROM.  Only a 
512-byte capable SCSI CD-ROM, too.




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