[Info-vax] Issue with booting and/or seeing the SYSBOOT prompt

[abrsvc]

On Sunday, October 24, 2021 at 10:36:42 AM UTC-4, John Tran wrote:
> On Saturday, October 23, 2021 at 12:19:56 PM UTC-3, Richard Brodie wrote: 
> > On Saturday, 23 October 2021 at 13:27:55 UTC+1, Dymaxion Development wrote: 
> > 
> > > We have a backup drive which is a mirror of the system from a year ago. The MODPARAMS.DAT, AUTOPARAM.PAR and IA64VMSSYS.PAR are identical (the MODPARAMS.DAT compared via DIFF and the last two via CHECKSUM). I can successfully boot from that (we'd use it as the primary disk but it's a small drive and there is no client data on it nor would it fit). This drive also a conversational boot and it too hangs. In any case, the fact it does boot there are no hardware issues that could be preventing the system from booting. 
> > If your second drive is bootable but you can't get the conversational boot to work it sounds like a console problem. What are you using: local VGA, serial or iLO? If VGA, that may well be your problem.
> My conjecture is that it is prompting and that's why it seems to hang. But I cannot see the prompt. It's console attached via KVM using the VGA port. I do not have access to the ILO. I can try serial but do not know what's involved.

I am going to suggest that this machine was set up to use the serial port for the console and not the VGA port.  This would explain why you see nothing.  If the system is expecting input and is set this way, it is the serial connection that will provide the prompt and expect input.
Dan