AlphaStation 200 NVRAM Problem

On Fri, 22 Apr 2016, Robert Jarratt wrote: If all else fails, then perhaps you could try the SROM mini console to get further information, or maybe even recover as there are commands there to poke at hardware. Information on using that is however scarce and scattered, you can find some here to start: <http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/1286> and then the pinout for the serial diagnostic port is included here: <http://manx.classiccmp.org/collections/mds-199909/cd1/alpha/pcdsatia.pdf> (the boot sequence is also described here, so you'll know that an NVRAM failure is reported by DROM code, i.e. before the final SRM or ARC console takes over and is able to use the regular serial port). That's a bit cryptic, but knowing that this is a low-level CPU interface you can gather the wiring from this document: <http://h18000.www1.hp.com/cpq-alphaserver/technology/literature/164lxtrm.pdf>. So BSROMCLK is Tx and SROMCDAT is Rx, but as noted here and in the discussion in the first reference you need an EIA/TIA 232 driver and receiver (there is power available on the diagnostic port, so you can use it for the circuit), and of course you need to cross the lines wiring them to your host. Finally the SROM console command reference is here: <http://h18000.www1.hp.com/cpq-alphaserver/technology/literature/srommini.pdf>. This manual doesn't specifically cover the Avanti, but I'd expect the user interface to be similar -- it's a low-level tool close to the CPU after all. NB on Avanti the 8kB NVRAM is separate from the TOY/NVR chip (which is a Benchmarq BQ4285, providing 114B of general storage only). Hope this helps and good luck with system recovery! Maciej