HP 9000/840S is alive (sorta) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

8 Jun 1999

...
  >You might be better off looking for a replacement
hard disk unit.  There's
...
  a
'shoebox' sized thing that contains a 300Mbyte ESDI (I think) drive +
the appropriate HP interface board. I can find the number if Joe doesn't 
beat me to it. 
   You're way too slow!  Who do you think found this and told Steve about
 it? And THEN helped him load it. The ESDI drives are the 7957/7958/7959
 series. They're about 80, 158 and 300 Mb capacity. I think there's a 7957
 on E-OverPay right now.

I've got several of the "showbox" drives with my HP 3000/42 but, don't
want 
to cannibalize that system (I think they're 7963B's). I may have to shop 
around for another one.

Last night I fired up the 9000/840 again and got better results. Seems like 
the HD is starting to loosen up a little. Could be that the servos were a 
little sticky from being stored. Every time I start the system, it gets 
fewer errors.

I was able to boot the system in single-user mode and got in as ROOT. I 
don't know the exact boot sequence because my terminal failed during the 
process ( cold solder joint in the verticle defelection circuitry). By the 
time I got it hooked up again, the system had completed booting and I was 
magically logged in as ROOT. Yipee!!!

Before I can start the system in multiple user mode, I gotta figure out a 
fail safe way to change the ROOT password. According to the MAN pages, you 
gotta supply the current password if you use the "passwd" command. That 
won't work because I don't know the current password. DOH!

I can think of two possibilities:

1.) Create a new user with ROOT permissions.

2.) Modify the ROOT entry in the /ETC/PASSWORD file. This sounds kinda 
risky. If the syntax isn't correct, I could really be screwed.

If anyone has any better suggestions, I'd like to hear them. In any event, 
I don't want to risk locking myself out of the system.

It looks like there are very few user files on the system (at least on this 
HD). Mostly what I'm seeing is the HPUX OS installation. Either the files 
were purged, prior to decommission, or they're on the other HD.

Now, I gotta figure out how to mount the other drive. Every time I run the 
command 'mount' I get an ugly error. When I run it, I can hear the HD 
seeking and after about 2 minutes, the error message displayed. Gotta 
feeling this  utility is on one of the bad HD sectors.

Anyway, things are looking better  :-)
Catch Ya Later,

Steve Robertson - &lt;steverob(a)hotoffice.com&gt;