Understanding DECsystem 5100 Self Test Failure

[Richard Loken]

On Mon, 5 Jan 2015, Robert Jarratt wrote:

> I have kept the original, but I am not sure that it was faulty in the first
> place. I think the fault is something else, but I am not sure what. I did
> find some pages on how to "repair" one, but I would rather be sure it is
> faulty now before trying to do anything to it. For the record the RTC
> self-test passes successfully.

I agree that you might want reserve judgement on the RTC.

The RTC problem in my Alphaserver a very strange (and well documented) case.
If the battery is dead, which it is after 20 years on the job, then the
system time is not what OpenVMS expects so it refuses to boot.  I have not
found a way around this except to reinstall VMS which I did on two occasions
and then it will run just fine (for VMS anyway) until the next time the
power is disconnected.  That business gets old really fast - especially when
the guy in the next office trips the circuit breaker less than 24 hours
after I have brought it back on line.

I like this big noisy box and I like VMS so I must fix the RTC.

-- 
   Richard Loken VE6BSV, Unix System Administrator : "Anybody can be a father
   Athabasca University                            :  but you have to earn
   Athabasca, Alberta Canada                       :  the title of 'daddy'"
   ** richardlo at admin.athabascau.ca **             :  - Lynn Johnston