Re: PC164 SRM firmware problem

On Mon, Oct 14, 2002 at 10:12:34PM -0500, Josh Tolbert wrote:
>       I obtained a PC164 motherboard, a 500MHz 21164 Alpha, 128M RAM and
> various other bits (including a dead CPU fan; I just re-pinned an Intel
> heatsink fan to work on the DEC motherboard) to use as a FreeBSD machine.
> Unfortunately, I'm not able to get FreeBSD installed because I'm having
> problems with the SRM firmware update. I know this is semi-off-topic for
> this list, but I've looked around and can't find a description of a
> similar problem anywhere.  Hopefully someone on the list can point me in
> the right direction.
>       When I received the board, it had ARC firmware in the ROM. Since
> that won't do for FreeBSD, I downloaded the SRM firmware and followed the
> documented procedure to flash the SRM firmware (put fwupdate.exe and
> pc164srm.rom on a floppy, update firmware from the ARC console and just
> follow the prompts). After rebooting, I get the standard blue screen with
> a black border, a blinking white cursor and nothing else. I don't see the
> customary SRM ">>>" prompt or a prompt of any sort. I've tried pressing
> enter (and other keys) as suggested, to no avail.

I've had a really similar problem with a PC164 LX.  I haven't even gotten
as far as you have yet unfortunately :(.

Do get the serial console set up, it can be helpful if SRM has been
set up to talk to it :).  One of the two boxes I was looking at
definitely had SRM set up to go to the first serial port.  The other 
is still stuck in ARC as we speak, but I have a few more things to 
try before I completely give up :).

The only other thing I can recommend is that a number of people have
found that there are problems going directly to the latest version of
the firmware.  If you have an older version of SRM then give that a
try.

-- 
Greg Lewis                          Email   : glewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Eyes Beyond                         Web     : http://www.eyesbeyond.com
Information Technology              FreeBSD : glewis@xxxxxxxxxxx


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