DELUA technical manual, VAX diagnostic

[Rich Alderson]

From: Johnny Billquist
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2014 10:40 PM

> On 2014-11-17 11:05, Rich Alderson wrote:

>> We have a crumbling DELUA in the VAX-11/780-5 at LCM.  There is a
>> copy of the *User's* Manual at Bitsavers, but not the *Technical*
>> Manual.  Does anyone happen to have a copy lining the hamster cage
>> floor, vel sim.?

> Don't have the manual. I *might* have the diagnostics. I need to check
> when I'm back in Seattle in a couple of days.

Thanks, Johnny.  Matt Burke's note took care of the diagnostics issue.

> What is "crumbling" about the DELUA?

There has been an ongoing issue with the network service for several years,
but we haven't had the time to go after it.  (It appeared to be an issue
with CMU/IP, and there were not enough software cycles among the 3 people
on the museum project at that time.)  What happens is the following, taken
from the latest console log:

    %%%%%%%%%%%  OPCOM  17-NOV-2014 20:24:09.56  %%%%%%%%%%%
    Message from user SYSTEM on ROSIE
    IPACP: XEDRV: MPBS = 1500

    %%%%%%%%%%%  OPCOM  17-NOV-2014 20:24:09.60  %%%%%%%%%%%
    Message from user SYSTEM on ROSIE
    IPACP: XE (DEC ENET) restarted, count = 3

    %%%%%%%%%%%  OPCOM  17-NOV-2014 20:24:09.63  %%%%%%%%%%%
    Message from user SYSTEM on ROSIE
    IPACP: XE $QIO error (send),RC=0000001C

    %%%%%%%%%%%  OPCOM  17-NOV-2014 20:24:18.56  %%%%%%%%%%%
    Message from user SYSTEM on ROSIE
    IPACP: XEDRV: MPBS = 1500

    %%%%%%%%%%%  OPCOM  17-NOV-2014 20:24:18.60  %%%%%%%%%%%
    Message from user SYSTEM on ROSIE
    IPACP: XE (DEC ENET) restarted, count = 4

    [snip]

    %%%%%%%%%%%  OPCOM  17-NOV-2014 23:16:10.56  %%%%%%%%%%%
    Message from user SYSTEM on ROSIE
    IPACP: XEDRV: MPBS = 1500

    %%%%%%%%%%%  OPCOM  17-NOV-2014 23:16:10.59  %%%%%%%%%%%
    Message from user SYSTEM on ROSIE
    IPACP: XE (DEC ENET) restarted, count = 160

Eventually, no connections to the VAX can be completed.  A shutdown and
reboot (VMS = WNT) would clear it up for a few days--which made it look
like a memory leak or something similar.

In the past month and a half, it's gotten more frequent; Friday evening,
the system went south (for the Brits, west) after only 2 hours and was
unavailable to our users, such as they are, all weekend.  This smells much
more like a hardware failure than software, so I posted my query about the
VAX diagnostic and the tech manual.

We also noted that the socketed parts (including the 68000) were all in
tin, so tried the obvious and reseated them to crackling sounds like my
knees after sitting too long.  The system stayed on the net for more than
8 hours, but it still went away again.  Clearly, simplistic fixes are not
enough.

That's what's crumbling. :-/

                                                                Rich


Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computer Museum
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134

mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org

http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/