13 May
2018
13 May
'18
3 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> On Behalf Of Grant Taylor via
cctalk
Sent: 13 May 2018 00:59
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Restoring a PC Server 500 P/390
On 05/12/2018 05:07 PM, Dave Wade via cctalk wrote:
Actually it was good to run through what I had done and write it down. I am a volunteer at
the museum of science and industry and when I work there we record everything in a log
book. I don't follow the same discipline at home but it would be a good idea.
I was so unsure of what I was doing that I
haven't blogged, twittered,
or even Facebooked....
And here I went and asked you to air dirty laundry. ? I'm sorry.
But I am grateful that you did so. :-) I did find it an interesting read, and I
have a few comments that I'll share inline below.
The server
just about worked when I got it, but with six 20 year old
disks (I think they are twenty) in a flaky RAID array the thing spent
more time recovering dropped disks than it did working. The spin up
time is critical, and like me I think these are showing their age and
the array controller gets tired of waiting for them to come ready and
then the array needs to be checked for consistency. Yuk.
Ya, I can see how that could be a problem.
What sort of RAID are they in? One big six disk RAID 5? Or is it something
more exotic? Striping across three sets of two disk mirrors?
Is one of them a hot spare?
How big are each of the disks?
Are they true SCSI? Or are they some variant of SCSI that IBM liked to mess
with in the late '90s through the early '00s? Serial Storage Architecture (SSA)
comes to mind.
If they are standard SCSI, I'd be tempted to hook the drives up to another
machine, image them, and likely run SpinRite on them. (Order may depend
on their current state.)
I might also be tempted to try to have the drives spin up and stay spinning,
even if the machine is otherwise off. An external enclosure with separate
power would be really nice. At least that would help the typical physical
issues that drives tend to have.
Then, hopefully the drives would be stable and happy enough that you could
focus on the RAID card.
I was hoping
to get the RAID working and copy the data to elsewhere,
and may still try and do that, but for now I have been implementing
"Plan B":-
*nod*
Is there still original data on the RAID? Is it just intermittently accessible?
Just unstable enough that you can't rely on it for playing / learning?
1. Cleaned the
floppy drive. It?s a 2.88 and still a little flaky, but
it gets used a lot when messing with Microchannel and OS/2. The
equivalent of the BIOS config is run from floppy and it needs to be
re-run every time you move cards around.
Yep, I remember the System Reference Disks. ? I've been messing with a
Compaq ProLiant that has similar programs, but they reside on a partition on
the drive. Making it a little easier to run them.
The CDs are not bootable and need at least two
floppies to get them
loading so more reliance on the FDD.
*nod*nod*
My how things have changed.
Its not simple to change the drive as IBM
"re-purposed" some of the
lines on the cable that are "gnd" on most drives and used them to pass
info about drive. Plan is to try replacing it with a GoTek hack to
provide fake disk size info. Some one has done this on a p70. Not
sure if this will work here.
Grr! I think I'd heard that before, but did not realize the implications until
now.
GOTEK-flo
ppy-Emulator-Disk-Change
<monotone>joy</monotone>
Well, at least it's information that might be a helpful start.
Do you need the 2.88 MB disk drive? I thought that OS/2 and the System
Reference (configuration) disks were 1.44 MB. I'm wondering if you might be
able to trade it out with a 1.44 MB drive that might be a little bit happier.
Also, I think that ThinkPad's used similar
(decedent?) floppy technology.
There might be something you could take from ThinkPads and get it to work
(with adapter) in the PC Server 500.
No the RAID card works when the disks spin up OK. This has always been an issue with that
card. I think folks just kept the thing running 24 hours a day.
2. Messed with the RAID firmware, drive links and
drives. Its still
Foo Bared. The system came with no CD Drive or 9mm DAT fitted. When I
popped that back I think it broke the RAID. For now I have un-plugged
the RAID card.
ACK
That means that the existing RAID array is inaccessible.
3. Installed a BT646 Microchannel SCSI card from
E-Bay. Its SCSI/2 but
not as fast as the RAID card which is wide and of course can do multiple
i/os.
I wonder if the RAID card has a RAM cache on it, and if the RAM might be
failing. Lord knows what it would take to replace the RAM. Maybe the cache
could be disabled?
4. Installed a
SCSI2SD instead of hard drive. I have a 32Gb card in it
which works out a little less than what was in the server. Getting
the config right for this proved fun. At present I have it set as 2 x
4gb drives. The rest is un-allocated.
I've not yet had the pleasure of working with a SCSI to SD adapter.
I'm going to be messing with a Compaq Deskpro XL 560 which uses SCSI.
I"m hoping to use a SCSI-to-SATA adapter and then use a small SATA SSD.
*Hoping!*
5. There is a
SCSI CD ROM on the interface as well. This seems to have
fits from time to time.
I thought the SCSI CD-ROM was fairly standard. Meaning you can probably
trade it out with a different SCSI CD-ROM or possibly even a DVD-ROM.
Sure it's not authentic, but it might be happier hardware. Pick which problem
you want to fight when. ;-)
6. I had a
couple of goes at installing OS/2 Warp Server 4 (This is
Warp
3 with server components). I couldn't get the server to boot from the
SCSI2SD but there is a setting hidden in the Server Config that must
have got lost.
If memory serves, you need to specify which card to boot from. I don't recall
if the system config specifies what drive on what card or just what card and
subsequently relying on the card to know what drive (or fixed ID) to boot
from.
I wouldn't be completely surprised to learn that there was a partition size /
location / ID requirement to be able to boot.
I've long had problems getting OS/2 Warp 4 (CD from IBM) installed when
booting from disks made from images on the CD.
I want to say that OS/2 and / or it's boot manager had to have the boot
manager / partition be less than ~500 MB and within the first 2 GB of the
drive.
I don't know that it was 500 MB exactly. It's likely some multiple of or power
of 2 or 10 and / or a binary counter width.
Remember the drives that would have been available for use when the
machine came out.
Also, the RAID likely did some translation and might be able to take larger
drives than the machine could handle directly.
7. At this
point I had the SCSI2SD set as 2 x 1GB drives but decided
I needed more space, so I re-set them as 2 x 4gb. The base OS/2
installed OK but server portion barfed saying not enough free space. I
guess a pointer over flows. So spend an hour copying the CD onto the
"C" drive several times. It then installed OK.
I think I've heard tell of using a small partition for OS/2's boot manager and
then maybe a 4 GB partition for the OS.
I believe that OS/2 will use drives / partitions larger than 4 GB, but they may
be effectively limited to data drives.
All the reading that I've done on the P/390 installations have always had the
P/390 stuff on separate drives, typically D:.
So at this
point I had an OS/2 system that booted. I couldn't get the
P390 software to install as it wanted Communications Manager and I
didn't have it.
Oops!
For those who don't know the base OS/2 has
virtually no networking
included. IBM chose to separate networking as a separate product,
Communications Manager and charge a small fortune for it.
I don't know if that was specifically chosen on purpose or a side effect of how
things were distributed at the time.
Remember that Most OSs didn't have native networking ability. Windows 3.x
got it as somewhat of a back port very late. Windows 95 had minimal
networking when it first came out. I think most of Windows networking was
introduced in NT and shifted to 3.x / 95.
Also, I believe that Communications Manager was a product that could be
added to an earlier version of OS/2 (same major version) that added
networking.
Even when I install Warp 4 in VM, I see that the Base OS gets installed and
then the Communications Manager (read: server) components get added
later.
I believe this also patterns after what mainframe OSs and other unixes did at
the time too.
Ultimately I don't think this was malicious / extortionist behavior.
Rather differences at the time.
I think at
this point I also installed service from a WarpUp! CD. I
have also installed Netscape 4.6 and InfoZip from this CD but not Java.
Nice.
However, I have since found that Personal
Communications which
includes
3270 and 5250 terminal emulators also includes a "mini" version of
Communications manager and should be sufficient to run the P390 code.
Eh.... I don't think that /I/ would bet on that. Maybe that is the case.
I've run into multiple different versions of /
products from IBM that have
communications in the name. I think that Communications Manager was the
networking add on for (and rolled into later versions of) OS/2.
The Personal Communications that I've run into was more a client application
including a terminal emulator.
PCOMMS is "just" a client emulator, but as OS/2 has no comms stack when you
install it on OS/2 if its to work with no pre-reqs, it has to include a complete comms
stack.
It will talk to a mainframe over TCP/IP but it will also talk directly to SNA over LAN and
WAN and also via dedicated 3270 hardware. It will do SNA over SDLC.
On windows it installs several services so you can trace token ring traffic. Perhaps more
than just a client emulator, but these days that?s how its used.
I have now
installed that but at first I still couldn't get the P/390
support code to install. However, I found I wasn't installing the very
latest version of the P390 support code. That has now gone on, after
copying one disk in another PC as the drive in the server decided it
couldn't read it. I can now load the microcode into the card, but I
can't connect the 3270 emulator as a console.
*nod*
See previous comment about 1.44 MB vs 2.88 MB disks and what you truly
need.
I have now re-read the documents and think I know
what I need to do, I
don't have the IP port in the P390 config matching the port in PCOMMS.
Hum. I wonder how networking on the P/390 and it's emulated 3174 (?)
Establishment controller work.
If it's anything like Hercules, you'll need one IP for the P/390 and a different
IP from OS/2. ? I could easily be completely wrong.
I also think I
may need to tweak the OS/2 config.sys.
Quite likely. I think the vast majority of OS/2's config lives in the config.sys
file (or other similar files) and requires a reboot to apply the new settings.
At some point I have also zipped up a mainframe
OS from Hercules,
copied it to a CD and un-zipped it onto the server. Hopefully tomorrow
I should be able to load VM/CMS.
I'll be interested to see how that turns out.
I also am still having issues with the Video
Card. Its IBM SVGA
Adaptor/1 which I believe should do 1024 x 768 but its stuck in 800 x 600.
Hum.
I've found video drivers under OS/2 to be questionable. I've been stuck in
VM, which has it's own problems.
I can't get PMVNC to run. It says its started
but when I try the
config program it says it can't find the started program.
:-(
Thank you for sharing, it was a very interesting read.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
Dave