21 Aug
2007
21 Aug
'07
10:48 a.m.
Hi,
I have a couple of these and need some information.
These are NCR mini tower servers with a 68000 cpu. Has
a Qic type Cartridge tape and comm board with 8 TTY ports
(all 15 pin) and 2 CPU ports (1 DB9 and 1 DB15).
I believe that the system boots to the CPU port
on the back and then goes to the tty00 port after it
loads the OS. I can see what it is doing on the CPU port
up to the drive test. It works the drive for a short time
and then stops displaying anything.
The manuals don't say anything about the console port or
pin outs. I would guess they expect the system to be install
by someone other than the end user.
The system freezes on self test when it starts to read the hard
drive Or it has switched over to the comm board and TTYxx ports.
I would guess that the drive needs to be formatted and
the OS reloaded.
So does anyone have a boot tape and/or the serial pin outs both 9 and
15 pin for one of these.
Thanks, Jerry
g-wright at att.net
21 Aug
21 Aug
12:58 p.m.
g-wright at att.net wrote:
Hi,
I have a couple of these and need some information.
These are NCR mini tower servers with a 68000 cpu.
I've not heard them called "mini" before, but I think the regular Tower 400
was a 68000 machine with ST412 disk interface (the 'MSC' board) and a HPSIO-8
board for serial.
I've got a 700 model - '030 CPU, ECC memory, dual HPSIO-16 boards, Ethernet,
HPMSC SCSI controller, system standby/suspend etc. They're not blindingly
fast (Ethernet response is *really* sluggish), but they're nice enough
machines in a "real computer" kind of way.
a Qic type Cartridge tape and comm board with 8 TTY
ports
(all 15 pin) and 2 CPU ports (1 DB9 and 1 DB15).
The DB15 is the console. The DB9 is for a remote diagnostic modem link (I'm
not sure whether you can get a fully-functional console up on it, and I think
it's stuck at 2400 baud)
The manuals don't say anything about the console
port or
pin outs.
Console pinouts:
1 TxD out
2 RTS out
3 DSR in
4 DTR out
9 RxD in
10 CTS in
11 sig gnd
12 DCD in
Hazy memory says that it might expect 9600 baud, 7E1 by default. I might have
the jumper settings for the serial board that you have - I can take a look if
you want.
I think the regular terminal lines might use the same pinouts on your machine
(my 700 has 37-way connectors with four ports over each connector).
So does anyone have a boot tape
Afraid not... I'd like to hear from anyone who has them too. I've got raw
drive image backups of my machine, but it'd be nice to know that the install
media was out there. I think there are two flavours of boot tape
(unfortunately for me) - one that'll work with 400-6x0 machines, and one
that's specific to the 700 (I've not sure about the 750 and 800).
Note the if you have a BNC connector toward the bottom of the machine at the
back, it's something to do with the power fail detection circuitry. It's not a
Ethernet network connector and plugging it into one would result in
interesting things happening :-)
cheers
Jules
3:14 p.m.
On Tuesday 21 August 2007, g-wright at att.net wrote:
Hi,
I have a couple of these and need some information.
These are NCR mini tower servers with a 68000 cpu. Has
a Qic type Cartridge tape and comm board with 8 TTY ports
(all 15 pin) and 2 CPU ports (1 DB9 and 1 DB15).
...
I would guess that the drive needs to be formatted
and
the OS reloaded.
So does anyone have a boot tape and/or the serial pin outs both 9
and 15 pin for one of these.
I gave up trying to make mine work, once I found out that the install
tapes are serial-number locked, and (probably) won't work on any
machine other than the one they were distributed with.
Good luck getting any help from NCR/Unisys on this (Unisys rebadged and
sold them under the Unisys brand name.. or did NCR rebadge them?).
Pat
--
Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org
3:44 p.m.
Patrick Finnegan wrote:
I gave up trying to make mine work, once I found out
that the install
tapes are serial-number locked, and (probably) won't work on any
machine other than the one they were distributed with.
Hmm, I'd not heard that one before, and back when I got my system (mid 90's) I
chatted to a few people who'd worked for NCR on the systems. They talked as
though any tape would work with any system - but see my note in the other
message about the 700-series distribution being a bit unique.
(Supposedly a previous-generation tape would boot and give the illusion of
installing on a 700-series machine, but the machine would never complete a
successful post-install boot)
Unfortunately whilst I pulled the boards [1] from a working 400 series (when I
got my 700) and kept those, I couldn't get the drive - the owner of the
machine wanted to keep that as it was still worth a bit of money to him. I
suspect Jerry's system might be OK though and just in need of a proper console
- quite possibly it's either stuck in diagnostic mode or needs the filesystem
checking.
[1] I *think* I've still got the MSC disk controller and a HPSIO-8 + backplane
from that 400. I've probably got some photocopies
containing the jumper
settings for the various boards, too.
Good luck getting any help from NCR/Unisys
Yeah, I never managed to get any help out of them directly 12 years ago, and
that situation probably hasn't improved :-) The engineers acting alone were
really helpful, though. I even got a complete set of manuals loaned to me once.
cheers
Jules
6285
days inactive
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3 comments
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participants (3)
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g-wright＠att.net -
julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk -
pat＠computer-refuge.org