21 Aug
2007
21 Aug
'07
3:44 p.m.
Patrick Finnegan wrote:
I gave up trying to make mine work, once I found out
that the install
tapes are serial-number locked, and (probably) won't work on any
machine other than the one they were distributed with.
Hmm, I'd not heard that one before, and back when I got my system (mid 90's) I
chatted to a few people who'd worked for NCR on the systems. They talked as
though any tape would work with any system - but see my note in the other
message about the 700-series distribution being a bit unique.
(Supposedly a previous-generation tape would boot and give the illusion of
installing on a 700-series machine, but the machine would never complete a
successful post-install boot)
Unfortunately whilst I pulled the boards [1] from a working 400 series (when I
got my 700) and kept those, I couldn't get the drive - the owner of the
machine wanted to keep that as it was still worth a bit of money to him. I
suspect Jerry's system might be OK though and just in need of a proper console
- quite possibly it's either stuck in diagnostic mode or needs the filesystem
checking.
[1] I *think* I've still got the MSC disk controller and a HPSIO-8 + backplane
from that 400. I've probably got some photocopies
containing the jumper
settings for the various boards, too.
Good luck getting any help from NCR/Unisys
Yeah, I never managed to get any help out of them directly 12 years ago, and
that situation probably hasn't improved :-) The engineers acting alone were
really helpful, though. I even got a complete set of manuals loaned to me once.
cheers
Jules