Got the HP9k system booted! was: New find & HP-UX p/w?

Upon the date 15:09 08-04-05, Carlos Murillo said something like: Okay, we've got success up to a limit -and that limit is the need for a login name and password. There is indeed HP-UX of some heretofore unknown version loaded. The NEC monitor I recently found at the local Salvation Army was able to be brightened up by adjusting the G2 gun drive controls a little. Yippee! A decent $3.00 17" multi-input monitor!!! Carlos, you evidently know HP-UX on these machines, so I'll address this section to you. Other folks may chime-in too if they have additional observations. This thread will add to our archival information on these machines -of which I've seen relatively little over the years up to now. Please note that I know only a little about *nix systems and am willing and able to listen and learn from you. I've had to work with an SVR4 '486 box back in the mid-90's at work and have forgotten 90% of what I picked up then. Age and disuse of that brief UNIX experience, I guess. I got the box and software tucked away here at home as the application was obsoleted in 1994 or '95 and I rescued the box and floppy disks from salvage. So anyway, per your instructions above, I booted to the Console Login and cycled power off/on. This forced the machine to fsck. After seeing the "/etc/bcheckrc: " I chose the first option you offered, CTRL-C. That did nothing. I tried CTRL-DEL/ESC next. This stopped the fsck process. Here's what it said: " Interrupt FSCK INTERRUPTED STARTING A SHELL FOR MANUAL fsck, ^D WHEN FILE SYSTEM FIXED (in bcheckrc) # <blockcursor>" Was that block cursor the single user prompt?? What is bcheckrc and why am I in it (other than the obvious fsck)? I hit ^D which caused the machine to appear to finish its fsck. The Console Login prompt appears again. This is back to where I started. Hmmm, let's try your last interruption suggestion . . . I power cycle off/on and let the machine completely finish its fsck process and boot to the Console Login prompt in order to get the fsck process completed correctly. I power cycle again to force a fsck and after the "/etc/bcheckrc: " appears I hit CTRL-\. The results were different. Here's what it said: " 11 Quit - core dumped UNEXPECTED ERROR DURING fsck -P, RUN fsck INTERACTIVELY! STARTING A SHELL FOR MANUAL fsck, ^D WHEN FILE SYSTEM FIXED (in bcheckrc) # <blockcursor>" Well, an error and core dump seem to not be the method of choice. This is where I gave up. So, I power cycled the machine in order to correctly complete the fsck, shut it off and put it away until I could hear from the collective expertise from the list. Nothing like this bothers me if I have some kind of direction in which to point myself. I'm like Tony, I'll tackle anything hardware-wise, but this software needs a little bit of coaching. On this 375 there is an HPIB connector bolted into the opening labeled SCSI/HS HPIB. I see a small daughter board attached to the back of the HPIB connector with a ribbon cable extending down to a header on the main CPU board. There is also a fifty-pin header on the main board meant, evidently, for connecting the SCSI option in place of the HS HPIB option. I would bet that the SCSI connector is the standard 50-pin Micro Ribbon connector used for SCSI-1 and fits in place of that HS HPIB connector. There is a second HPIB connector right on the main CPU meant for I/O and other slow speed peripherals and not mass storage like the HS HPIB is meant for. Do you know if simply removing the HS HPIB connector assembly and inserting a 50-pin ribbon cable into that 50-pin header would enable use of SCSI?? Or is there a daughter card, ? la the HS HPIB, involved? Evidently cannot use both (:-\ Another important question is whether this machine can be made y2k compliant? I had to replace the 3V lithium coin cell on the main CPU board and the machine prompted for a date/time upon bootup. Wouldn't take anything above 99 so I set it at 95, exactly 10 years in the past. Date entry is in the form of MMDDhhmm[yy]. When 05 is entered for yy the date always displays as 1970. Seems 70 to 99 only work. The EEPROM firmware (chip location U47) on my machine is part number 1818-5062 and *may* be the latest version. Upon startup the machine announces: "BOOTROM Rev. 2.0 29 Nov 90". I make that version assumption by believing the firmware upgrade required on this website: http://www.blobulent.com:16080/hp300/upgrade/hp380.html would be pretty much the last version released since the webpage had been made some years after my machine (ca 1991) was made. Looks like we're SOL, but that needs to be confirmed by the 9000/300 experts out there. That upgrade to a 380 looks tempting as my machine is just the one they're talking about. Very simple, except for the compilation of a new kernel in Step 1. I'm primarily a hardware guy. But, I'd need to use the machine frequently to really justify messing around with the upgrade. Thanks for the help again! Regards, Chris F. NNNN Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian Jamestown, NY USA cfandt at netsync.net Member of Antique Wireless Association URL: http://www.antiquewireless.org/