5 Sep
2011
5 Sep
'11
9:43 a.m.
Hey all!
I went to fire up my DEC Personal Workstation 500au the other day and it
doesn't boot up any more :(
I don't get anything out of video or the serial console and the
diagnostic lights all go out (00) rather than displaying an error or
booting message. The battery in it was dead and I replaced it but to no
avail.
Anybody come across this before and know how to fix it?
Thanks!
Brian
5 Sep
5 Sep
5:56 p.m.
This actually happened to me last month. I was taking a PWS 500 out of
storage and, of course the battery was (presumed)dead. But I did not get any
video and nothing out of the serial port. I was all set to use it for parts
and took all the cards out of the pci slots. I hooked up the serial port and
viola! I got some stuff out of the serial port.
Remember the PWS 500 DEFAULTS to the ARC ( for windows) and it will take a
while for it to output messages thru the serial port.
Once you replace the battery, you can switch to the SRM console. After I got
a prompt serial output, I replaced the cards, one at a time to make sure
they were OK.
You should also make sure the memory is well seated, also remember that the
default procedure is for the machine to check memory, so until you can
change the defaults in the firmware, it will take a while to boot. The card
removal was a precaution as a faulty card may not allow it to boot.
Good luck!
Cheers
tom
On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 9:43 AM, Brian Wheeler <bdwheele at indiana.edu> wrote:
Hey all!
I went to fire up my DEC Personal Workstation 500au the other day and it
doesn't boot up any more :(
I don't get anything out of video or the serial console and the
diagnostic lights all go out (00) rather than displaying an error or
booting message. The battery in it was dead and I replaced it but to no
avail.
Anybody come across this before and know how to fix it?
Thanks!
Brian
7:29 p.m.
On Mon, 2011-09-05 at 17:56 -0700, Tom publix wrote:
This actually happened to me last month. I was taking
a PWS 500 out of
storage and, of course the battery was (presumed)dead. But I did not get any
video and nothing out of the serial port. I was all set to use it for parts
and took all the cards out of the pci slots. I hooked up the serial port and
viola! I got some stuff out of the serial port.
Remember the PWS 500 DEFAULTS to the ARC ( for windows) and it will take a
while for it to output messages thru the serial port.
Once you replace the battery, you can switch to the SRM console. After I got
a prompt serial output, I replaced the cards, one at a time to make sure
they were OK.
You should also make sure the memory is well seated, also remember that the
default procedure is for the machine to check memory, so until you can
change the defaults in the firmware, it will take a while to boot. The card
removal was a precaution as a faulty card may not allow it to boot.
Good luck!
Well, I had it hooked up to a terminal and to the vga monitor via a
powerstorm 3D30 card. No output on either. Weird thing is, it
sometimes ignores the power switch for both on and off. Letting it sit
with the power unplugged seems to clear it, but I'm wondering if
something bigger is going on. I'd really hate to lose this machine but
I'm not terribly optimistic.
I also tried it with a generic trident pci card with no luck either.
The monitor never goes out of powersave with either card. With
alphabios I would have expected it to at least send a black screen to
the monitor...
Any ideas?
Brian
Cheers
tom
On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 9:43 AM, Brian Wheeler <bdwheele at indiana.edu> wrote:
> Hey all!
>
> I went to fire up my DEC Personal Workstation 500au the other day and it
> doesn't boot up any more :(
>
> I don't get anything out of video or the serial console and the
> diagnostic lights all go out (00) rather than displaying an error or
> booting message. The battery in it was dead and I replaced it but to no
> avail.
>
> Anybody come across this before and know how to fix it?
>
> Thanks!
> Brian
>
>
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