DS10 disk drives disappeared

[Mike Smith_33]

I have a ds10 that was complaining about the version of firmware. I upgraded the firmware and my disk drives disappeared.

Does anyone have any ideas? I doublechecked the shelf connection to the ds10 and ran initialize again but the drives still do no show up. I captured the sequence of what happened and I am attaching that in a word doc.

[Hoff]

Weird.

Has the AlphaServer DS10 box and the SCSI shelf been power-cycled?

And how did the box get from 4588 MB to 1024 MB? (That looks rather strange.)

What's SCSI_RESET set to? The PK* environment variables?

The Microsoft Word document containing the configuration information, having converted it into text, has been attached here.

Stephen Hoffman
HoffmanLabs

[Bill Hall]

Weird indeed. The DS10 officially only supports 2 1GB memory options. Wonder where the almost 2 1/2 GB came from. Its always a good idea to "show" as much as possible and then archive the output before starting any console "modifications".

>>> show config
>>> show device
>>> show fru
>>> show *

It wouldn't hurt to download Firmware Update 7.2 and try it. http://ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/Alpha/firmware/v72.zip It's probably a few years newer than the v6.6 you upgraded to. By the way, are you sure you "upgraded" the firmware? I've never "downgraded" Alpha firmware, so I'm not sure how the update utility reacts to a downgrade.

Bill

[Mike Smith_33]

Oh yes, I am sure I updated the firmware, if I remember correctly it was at 6.1 previously. This was an old box that we had out at one of the mills. The disk drives are internal as well as a scsi shelf and there is also a scsi tape drive. I will have to go back and look at the memory settings. This box had been in service for about 5 years and then out of service for a few months. There have been no changes to memory so I am not sure what is happening there. I have a meeting to get to so I will look at it again in a few.

[Mike Smith_33]

Ok, this is even stranger now that you mention the memory issue. I found the 7.1 firmware update which I applied today. I reviewed that output and the memory is only 1 gb, which is the correct amount that is in the machine. I still do not see the disk drives or the tape drive. I have powered off the external disk drives and the tape drive. I cannot even see the internal drives. Here is the output from the 7.1 firmware update.

I also did a show memory

>>>sho mem

Array # Size Base Addr
------- ---------- ---------
0 1024 MB 000000000

Total Bad Pages = 0
Total Good Memory = 1024 MBytes

[Hoff]

I'll assume nothing has changed on the SCSI bus, or in the PCI, or other such hardware.

Fire up the failsafe loader, and completely wipe and reload the most current SRM firmware?

[Mike Smith_33]

Here are the pk environment variables

pka0_disconnect 1
pka0_fast 1
pka0_host_id 7
pkb0_disconnect 1
pkb0_fast 1
pkb0_host_id 7

I have to get the scsi reset value and also figure out failsafe loader terminology. I can't recall having used that before.

[Mike Smith_33]

I have done some google research on the failsafe firmware loader and it appears to be on certain models. I have not been able to find out how to perform this specifically for the ds10. I was able to find online manuals for the ds10 but I did not see instructions on how to perform this. If anyone has a link I would appreciate it.

[Hoff]

I looked for the failsafe loader, and I (too) don't see it listed (anywhere) for the AlphaServer DS10, nor via the SRM or RMC.

As there's apparently no (manual) failsafe, I'd try a re-load of the firmware (from the 7.1 CD, if you have it), and power off and power on the box. (CD rather than floppy, as there are multiple floppies required for that route.)