23 Apr
2016
23 Apr
'16
4:33 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctech [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Peter
Coghlan
Sent: 23 April 2016 21:44
To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts <cctech at classiccmp.org>
Subject: RE: AlphaStation 200 NVRAM Problem
The equivelant in VMS is sys$crmpsc. I can supply a sample program (in
macro32) which calls it to read the firmware in a VAXStation 2000.
I don't know the right addresses to use for an Alphastation 200 though.
(Congratulations on the progress made so far. Maybe there is hope yet for
my two DEC 3000/600 machines which have similar symptoms.)
Regards,
Peter Coghlan.
Thanks for the tip, I had forgotten all about that system service (last used
it probably 30 years ago). I'll do it in C I think (assuming I have a C
compiler for the Alpha). Much easier than using examine and deposit. It
would be good to see the macro code though.
Thanks
Rob
First of all you might be able to run some SRAM diagnostics yourself,
either from the console (if it has a tool for this; at worst you could
poke at it manually with deposit/examine commands, but the complicated
flashbus access protocol will make it a tedious task unless there is a
way to script it) or from the OS (can't help how to do this from VMS;
under Linux you could mmap(2) /dev/mem at the right address and then
poke at it with a little program doing the right dance to get the
flashbus access protocol right), to see if it shows any symptoms of
misbehaviour.