topic Re: Alpha Workstation 600a in Alpha Servers

Alpha Workstation 600a

TeddyTed — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 07:55:31 GMT

Hello,

while trying to restart an old DEC DIGITAL Workstation 600a I have this message :

Machine check occurred

pc = 0x0000000000700401, un 0xe6bf97abeefbbfff

No place to return

Does somebody may help ? Thanks.

Re: Alpha Workstation 600a

Steven Schweda — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 17:46:15 GMT

> while trying to restart an old DEC DIGITAL Workstation 600a I have
> this message :

What, exactly are you doing? POST? Boot from something? Running
some OS or other? Other?

Some context around that message might be interesting. Or is that
the first thing which appeared on your (unspecified) console device?

Re: Alpha Workstation 600a

TeddyTed — Sun, 02 May 2021 17:52:05 GMT

Thanks for your answer and sorry for my mistakes in English (if somebody would be spaeking French it would be very helpful).

When I switch on the workstation, trying to boot on hard drive (SCSI) with NT 4.0 OS, everything seems to run well but after displaying the "digital Workstation" banner, the RAM checking failed before reaching the 512 Mb.

Then, in an AlphaBIOS 5.64 window I have the following message :

Alpha Processor and system information :

System : DIGITAL Personnal Workstation 600a

Processor : Digital Alpha 21164, 599 Mhz

Memory : 512 MB

Fatal machine check, Pyxis state follows :

HalpmasterabortExpected = 0

NT Firmware Monitor.

Press H for help, Q to quit.

** Machine Chack occurred.

PC = 0xffffffff80750c18, VA = 0xe6bf97afeeffbfff

No place to return.

Reset machine ?

What does that mean ? Have you any solution ? I have pics of screen if you wish.

Thanks for your help.

Laurens.

Re: Alpha Workstation 600a

Steven Schweda — Mon, 03 May 2021 18:10:54 GMT

> [...] NT 4.0 OS, [...] AlphaBIOS [...]

Ah. I've never tried to run Windows on these systems. The most I
ever did with AlphaBIOS was replace it with the SRM console, so that I
could run Tru64 or VMS.

I'd expect "Machine check" to mean a hardware problem. Knowing
nothing, I might try removing some -- memory, PCI cards, and so on, to
try to isolate the problem.

Re: Alpha Workstation 600a

TeddyTed — Mon, 03 May 2021 18:43:34 GMT

Hello, thanks for your quick answer.

I am going to swap memory cards with other of the same type.

I shall keep you updated.