Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wuarchive!udel!haven.umd.edu!uflorida!travis!tom From: tom@ssd.csd.harris.com (Tom Horsley) Newsgroups: comp.sys.m88k Subject: Strange problems booting AViiON from tape? Message-ID: Date: 7 May 91 11:06:41 GMT Sender: news@travis.csd.harris.com Organization: Harris Computer Systems Division Lines: 40 This note is for any DG guru's out there who might have a clue as to what is going on with my AV 200 workstation (it is not a real problem, since I have a workaround now, but I am still curious about the root cause of the symptoms). Problem: I can't boot stand alone diskman from tape (the initial boot "seems" to work, the line of =====s prints out, but as soon as the tape finishes rewinding, the system crashes back into SCM as though it is executing random gibberish (which it is)). Absolutely every other operation off of tape works perfectly. I move data between machines using the tape drive, I have even booted the knights demo off the tape drive (the tape diagnostic runs perfectly as well). Configuration: I have 2 SCSI boxes. The first has a cartridge tape (st(insc(),4)) and a 179MB hard disk (sd(insc(),0)). The second box has a R/W optical disk (sd(insc(),1)). Workaround: After getting DG service to look at it, we discovered that disconnecting the optical disk and terminating the SCSI on the 1st SCSI box allows everything to work perfectly. This workaround is perfectly acceptable, since I don't really need to boot off tape very often and it only takes a few seconds to unplug the SCSI cable, but I am really curious about what could be going on. Does anyone familiar with the DG boot code know if some sort of special I/O operation happens during the boot of standalone diskman which does not happen during any other form of I/O? Has anyone ever seen similar symptoms? -- ====================================================================== domain: tahorsley@csd.harris.com USMail: Tom Horsley uucp: ...!uunet!hcx1!tahorsley 511 Kingbird Circle Delray Beach, FL 33444 +==== Censorship is the only form of Obscenity ======================+ | (Wait, I forgot government tobacco subsidies...) | +====================================================================+