OpenVMS 7.3 crash on startup after 17 years powered off

[dboreham]

Hello, wondering if anyone has ideas about this: I have a VAXStation 4000 that has sat on a shelf for many years. It was successfully running OpenVMS 7.3 when last powered on. On initial boot the kernel prompted for the date/time. I input the correct date/time. It then threw a fatal exception (see below). Initially I suspected that the version of OpenVMS installed is unhappy to find itself in 2021. However, I found a video on YouTube where someone demonstrates booting what appears to be the exact same version of the OS in 2019. I haven't changed anything about the machine since it was last running. Thanks for any pointers.

The forum won't allow me to upload an image, so I've copied the error text below:

The OpenVMS VAX system is now executing the system startup procedure.
**** Fatal BUG CHECK, version = V7.3      INVEXCEPTN, Exception while above ASTDk

     Crash CPU: 00       Primary CPU: 00

     Active/available CPU masks: 00000001/00000001

     Current process = STARTUP

<followed by register dump, process list, etc>

[dboreham]

After a bit of searching on the forum, I realized that output has been truncated on the terminal, so it's really "Exception while above ASTDEL ... interrupt stack".

This seems to be like an exception thrown inside an NMI handler type of thing, which is unlikely to be anything related to the date/time. 

I'm going to see if I can figure out how to run hardware diagnostics from the ROM...

Perhaps something related to corrupt RTC memory?

[Volker Halle]

An INVEXCEPTN crash is reported, when an exception (e.g. access violation) is taken while executing an instruction in kernel mode or when executing at higher IPL priority. It is a software problem, which - of course - can also be caused by handling an unexpected hardware error.

The only way to try to diagnose the underlying reason is by getting access to the crashdump file. If you can connect to the serial console line using a terminal emulator, you might be able to capture the crash output and post it here.

Is this a reproducible problem ? Can you do a conversational boot (>>> B/1 then SYSBOOT> set startup_p1 "MIN" and CONT) ? Can you boot from an OpenVMS VAX CDrom ?

Volker.

[dboreham]

Thanks! 

I found the Service Information manual for the machine online, and after reading that I realize the system has power-on selftest memory test failures (I didn't understand how to interpret the terse output correctly). I will see if re-seating the memory chips/boards helps. 

[dboreham]

I was able to get OpenVMS to boot after replacing the machine's memory modules.