Re: PC164 SRM firmware problem

On Tue, Oct 15, 2002 at 01:15:25PM +0930, Greg Lewis wrote:
> 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.

The oldest FW CD I have that has the AlphaPC164 contains SRM 4.8

If anybody wants to try that I could make the f/w image available.

Wilko

[historians beware, the very oldest FW CD I own is a from 1993 ;-) ]

-- 
|   / o / /_  _                                 wilko@xxxxxxxxxxx
|/|/ / / /(  (_)  Bulte                         Arnhem, the Netherlands

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