3 Jan
1999
3 Jan
'99
8:32 p.m.
Are you sure it crashes? these utilities take a while
to load and run,
even on a DN5500.
Doh!! It's been a LLOONNGGG time since I had this Apollo out
and running,
and of course I had forgotten how these things work... Of course, the "ex"
command is part of what I forgot... And to make things a bit more
interesting, I also forgot the root password. But luckily my memory came
back quickly, I'd hate to think how long it would take to get it back up
running if I forgot the password...
When you boot in service mode, you get the "phase
one shell" which is
really just a simple ROM monitor. The machine will load and run its
self-tests, and then return the phase one shell prompt. Typing "H" will
get you a list of the commands you can use at this point.
My favorite part...
It's the only one that has every worked very well for
me. BTW, when in service mode don't forget to hit the return key to tell it
that you're there...
if the phase 2 shell loads ok, type "go" to
finish booting the OS. If the
OS won't boot from the phase 2 shell, reset the machine, EX SALVOL, REset
twice, and then EX DOMAIN_OS again. You can do a number of things from the
phase 2 shell; "help" will get you a list of commands.
actually you should
type "init", at least on my system.
If the machine isn't hooked up to a network, the
network traffic
indicators seem to behave non-deterministically.
I've noticed that. Also a lot
of errors if you run DEX and it's not hooked up.
Disks formatted for use in the DN5500 are not useable
on other machines
without reformatting, either (the same thing holds in reverse), so if your
780 MB disks were used on a DN5500, neither will be accessible on anything
other than another DN5500.
Ouch!! That wasn't very nice... But I don't think
it's from a 5500. Maybe a
4000 or a 3000, but not a 5500. The machine seems to recognize it just
fine, but won't do anything because it doesn't have the SAU7 stuff loaded.
So now my DN3500 is loaded down and ready to pop circuit breakers(as if
that huge monitor couldn't do it alone). It's got 32MB RAM, a WD-7000 disk
controller(got two more of those and lots of OMNI's), an ugly little DR
network card(maybe I'll put ethernet in) and the PC card. No floppy drive
or tape drive, gotta work on that later. But first I need to figure out how
to hook up and access two drives atthe same time! Can't boot from a disk
with no OS, but can't plug in two drives at the same time with the cables I
have...
So next I'm going to try to stuff one of those 3000 motherboards(or was it
from a 3010?) into the old 3500 case and see if I
can't get it running.
Unfortunately, I only have one keyboard and one monitor.
But I DO have TWO
mice. The new one has three buttons that are kinda slanted, and on the
bottom it says it was made in Switzerland. And it's backwards! Roll it
down, the cursor moves up... Might be good for an upside-down trackball
though ;-)
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