Collecting Data General FAQ

So ya wanna get that DG machine running? Here are some quick pointers. I will follow with more. The MV4000 series machines have a babylon of disks, tapes etc. They all come together but you need to know a few things. A multifunction controller is a micro-eclipse machine which means you have to have microcode for it to work. This is provided in the form of an IPL program on floppy or tape. This is called the IOCB Emulator and is required to use io devices. It is loaded from the hard disk or from the default boot device as indicated to the controller via a dip switch setting on the controller itself and is an octal device code such as 24,62,22 etc. The IOCB emulator can be run from the boot media or from an installed copy on the hard disk in an area which is very special and cannot be accessed in any other way by the operating system or otherwise. Restart from power off Now you have a DG Nova 1200 16bit mini and a prompt which allows you to examine memory etc. Insert your second IPL disk or tape marked "Microcode". This is another program run by booting from the device it is in. Lets assume 9track tape at device code 62. Mount the microcode media and Enter "62L" case sensitive. The machine will load the microcode installer program and give you a menu. You can install the microcode to the hard disk if it has been high-level formatted. The traditional place is called 1001 and is a 'user area' inside but not accessible to the filesystem. It will also copy a filesystem legal version to the root dir of your hard disk and will appear as MV4000.MCF or other for other CPU. If you hard disk is not formatted for an operating system then just load the microcode. We will write it to disk later. Now you have an eclipse 32 bit machine and a slightly better but very similar command line called the SCP-CLI which allows you to boot from devices, examine and change memory etc. Now mount your OS install tape and enter "B 62" or substitute whatever device code your media is mounted on. The install will load and you will be on your way to the Disk Jockey program for AOS/VS (II) where you can prep your disk. The buss type for hard drives and such is tough to describe. Basicly if you have an Eclipse (MV series) machine your bus type is ECL. Now that you have prepped your hard disk you can chose another option in DJ that loads LOAD_II and reads from your install media. You can also use the Microcode installer to copy your microcode from whatever media to the 1001 user area. If all else fails, exit to the SCP-CLI via the Control-Esc key sequence and boot from the microcode install media and use it's installer to get the microcode on the hard disk. If you cannot get the IOCB emulator installed then you may need to low-level the drive. For this you need something called NOVA/MV ADES or MV ADEX. These are the diagnostic media and contain an operating system, microcode and everything else needed to diagnose the machine but possibly the microcode and certainly the IOCB emulator microcode. You may need to load these into memory first to run diags. Depends on the version and build of the diags. If it is DG and a big tape it is likely there is SCP but not IOCB microcode on the tape. If it is a small (short) tape, it is likely tailored for a given system and so may not be terribly useful. Ask me and I will help. There is no one program for it. You have to know the model number of the drive and which program to load to format it. ADES/ADEX is a bitch. Reel tapes are not formatted so just mount and go. Cart tapes vary but if it is dc300 or dc6150 they are not so mount and go. Floppys are formatted and so you are out of luck as my drive reads fine but formatting is kicking my ass. This is a problem because my IPL stuff is on floppy..... -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey S. Worley Technical Services Bits & Bytes Computer Services Inc. 1979B Hendersonville Road Asheville, NC 28803 828-684-8953 - voice 0900-1700 five days 828-687-9284 - 24hr fax Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk? Technoid(a)Cheta.net -----------------------------------------------------------