RS6k 7012/320H woes

[Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez]

Since RS6K systems have been mentioned recently, I thought I should ask 
for advice.  I have a Powerserver 320H with 32MB of RAM, an 8-port async 
EIA-232 adapter, a SCSI adapter and a 400MB HD.   No framebuffer or 
keyboard; no LAN card.  Because of the last issue, I haven't tried to do 
much with it.  I tried getting it to talk on the serial console (Serial 
1 connector in the back), following all the advice I found on the net:  
The pinout of the MODU serial connector, the null modem cable with full 
handshake (also driving the DCD line in the 320H).  I turn it on in 
service mode, and it spits a lot of LED codes, finds the HD, spins it up 
and it apparently loads something (I suppose AIX) from it.  But nothing 
is  ever sent out on the serial 1 port, or any other serial port.  I 
believe that during the POST it fails to initialize the serial 1 and 2 
ports, because the 320H's DTR and RTS lines are never asserted (the 
ports in the async RS232 card do assert these on power up, but they are 
equally silent). I made sure that the CTS, DSR and DCD inputs of the 
320H are being driven by the external terminal.

I made a video of the LED codes during POST and found some problems; 
here are the codes and their meaning:

120 BIST starting a CRC check on the 8752 EPROM.
122 BIST started a CRC check on the first 32K bytes of the OCS EPROM.
124 BIST started a CRC check on the OCS area of NVRAM.
130 BIST presence test started.
101 BIST started following reset.
153 BIST started ACLST test code.
154 BIST started AST test code.
100 BIST completed successfully; control was passed to IPL ROS.
211 IPL ROM CRC comparison error (irrecoverable). !!!!!!!
214 Power status register failed (irrecoverable).           !!!!!!!
218 RAM POST is looking for good memory.
219 RAM POST bit map is being generated.
290 IOCC POST error (irrecoverable).                         !!!!!!!
291 Standard I/O POST running.
252 Attempting a Service mode IPL from 7012 DBA disk-attached
          devices specified in IPL ROM Default Device List.
253 Attempting a Service mode IPL from SCSI-attached devices
          specified in the IPL ROM Default Device List.
299 IPL ROM passed control to the loaded program code.

814 NVRAM being identified or configured.

538 The configuration manager is going to invoke a configuration
          method.
813 Battery for time-of-day, NVRAM, and so on being identified or
          configured, or system I/O control logic being identified or
          configured.
538 The configuration manager is going to invoke a configuration
          method.
520 Bus configuration running.
538 The configuration manager is going to invoke a configuration
          method.
869 SCSI adapter being identified or configured.
538 The configuration manager is going to invoke a configuration
          method.
954 400MB SCSI disk drive being identified or configured.
538 The configuration manager is going to invoke a configuration
          method.
539 The configuration method has terminated, and control has
          returned to the configuration manager.
551 IPL varyon is running.
553 IPL phase 1 is complete.

The code 290 above is particularly worrysome, I think.  The NVRAM 
battery reads 2.85 volts even after all these years. I reseated all of 
the chips that are on bases, all of the cards, and connectors; there was 
no change.  Any ideas on how to proceed?

carlos.