Installing 11 or 11i on A-180

[Ron Levy]

I have an A-180 with 10.20 installed and running. I have an HP external CD-rom drive (dvd actually) and when the machine is running I can access it. But when I try to use it for an install, I get:
Boot IO Dependent Code (IODC) revision 144
Cannot Find Entry_Test
Failed IO operation with
Entry_IO
Status = -3
(Some numbers and then)
Error reading IPL.

Looking on these excellent forums, I found that that '-3' means: Can not complete call without error. An error of unknown type prevented the call from completing correctly.

My firmware is 39.32 and when I checked the available patches, that's the latest firmware I saw available for an A-180.

Any other suggestions?
Thanks!

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Ron

It could be an iffy cd, have you tried another cd.

Paula

[harry d brown jr]

Are you trying to install the 64bit version or the 32bit version??


http://docs.hp.com/hpux/pdf/5185-4304.pdf

page 41


live free or die
harry

[Ron Levy]

I receive the same error when I try either an 11.0 cd or an 11.i cd, both of which are tested and true on other systems. Unfortunately, this is the only external cdrom that is available.

Certainly, as an A-180c/1 (I just checked) it will only be able to be 32-bit. Is there a special 32-bit CD I should be using? Neither of the CDs I have say anything about that and I foolishly assumed that the one CD had both sets of OS files on it.

[Patrick Wallek]

Both the 32 and 64 bit versions of the OS are on the same CD. If you have booted from that CD before, then we will assume that the CD is OK.

I think your problem is that the particular CD Drive that you have is one that just happens to be one of those that HP can't boot from. I don't remember the exact reasoning, I think something do with the sector size???, but there are some brands of CD drives that HP machines can't boot from.

I'll see if I can find a post where that was addressed, unless someone else beats me to it.

[Patrick Wallek]

OK, Here's a thread for you to browse.

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x8676dfe5920fd5118fef0090279cd0f9,00.html

[Ron Levy]

The drive in question is an HP DVD-rom 6x/32x. It's made by Toshiba. I suppose it could just be too fast and too new. I'll have to see if I can rustle up another.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi Ron:

I have 2 A180C's and have used a C4315A DVD drive to load 11.0 on both boxes without incident. How you made certain that you have terminated the bus? That would tend to make the drive almost work perfectly if it were teminated within the box but not on the external bus.

[Ron Levy]

The HP DVD-rom drive has a real terminator on it as well as the cable leading to the A-180. Is there another place I need to terminate?

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

No, the other end of the bus is terminated inside the A-box. Any scsi bus must be terminated in exactly two places and those must be the ends of the bus. If you have other dives on this same bus and they are terminated internally, that would cause problems.

[Ron Levy]

As it turns out, the disks had tiny internal terminators on them. Thanks, all!