DEC Alpha 3000 Model 600

[Peter Coghlan]

Rod Smallwood wrote:
>
> I thought it might be nice to have a DEC based graphics work station.
> I had the Alpha, a high res monitor and the Hobbyist Media CD for 
> ALPHAVMS 8,3. (yes the system supports 8.3)
> SFSG ..  So CD in the drive and switch on. First a nice colour graphics 
> demo/test.
> Then the nomal system level stuff. >>> prompt, enter SHO DEV and our CD 
> drive shows as DKA400 just where it should be.
>
> So Boot DKA400: and off we go. After a while a menu appears from which 
> you can load  layered products you need.
> It gets part way through the load and falls over with a data error. The 
> cd is a real bought and paid for Media CD and is not a copy.
>

I've come across problems with CD media and/or CD drives in several alphas.
Sometimes cleaning the disks well helped (these were original CONDIST CDs too).
Other times cleaning the CD drive seemed to help but usually only for a while.
More often things quickly got worse and I had to change out the drive.

>
> Before I do a lot of tedious emaling (HP have taken the Hobbyist program 
> in house) has anybody successfully loaded an Alpha  with ALPHA VMS 8.3?
>

I'm not sure what you mean here.  I have ALPHA VMS 8.3 running on a Digital
Personal WorkStation 500a and 8.2 running on an Alphaserver 800 5/500.  I'm
sure lots of people are running 8.3 on all sorts of Alphas.

I have two Dec 3000 Model 600 machines but neither works - the LEDs count down
to F0 (IIRC) and that's it.  Nothing happens on the console.  Both failed in
service, one when I was trying to reboot it remotely.  I think they used to run
V6.2 - they've been out of action a long time.

Regards,
Peter Coghlan.