RS6k 7012/320H woes

For loading the diagnostic from diskettes diskettes see the section "running diagnostic program from diskette" in the previously mentioned "Diagnostic Information for Microchannel Systems"? the key switch has to be in the service (wrench) position insert the appropriate boot diskette there are two? 8MB of memory and >16MB of memory turn on power and after the self test it should start reading the diskette and when it finishes it will display C01 to prompt for the next diskette if that does not happen either the image is bad or there is a problem with the diskette drive.? There is a reasonable good chance that there is an issue with the diskette drive, especially if it was sitting on a carpeted floor.? Typically the diskette drive was rarely used and the fans in the system will draw air in through the diskette drive carrying all kinds of contamination with it, you may want to open the drive up and clean it out and clean the heads.? It is very likely that the diskette drive in the machine has the power lines in the ribbon cable instead of a separate power connector making replacements hard to find. As for the serial there is only one scenario that works fully pined cables with a null modem that matches the wiring of ? the printer terminal interposer. I don't think that an ethernet card is going to be a big help if you want to use the AIX that is on the disk as you have no way of configuring the ethernet network unless you can get a terminal working.? Another roadblock may be the root password, it is possible to break in when you have physical access to the machine however you still need a terminal and you also need original install media at the same level of AIX or a mksysb backup tape from the same level of AIX to boot into maintenance mode.? The original install media for a machine of this vintage would have been a tape or lots and lots of diskettes. Getting diagnostics to work would be a really good start. The AIX on the SP2 would have been the same, in fact the hardware on the SP2 nodes was similar to the regular RS/6000 boxes except the console was through a special serial network in the frame and accessed through the control workstation.? Most regular users likely accessed the nodes through a LAN. Paul.