Alphastation 500 Firmware Upgrade Failure

[wassa]

Can anybody help with the following problem:

While upgrading a Alphastation 500 firmware it failed while programming the SRM. Now when the computer is turned on it does not get to the console (chevron) prompt.

Is there anyway to boot from floppy (dva0:) and flash the ROM?

[Steven Schweda]

I've never tried it, but there may be a
main-board jumper which enables the "failsafe
loader", which is supposed to be able to load
firmware from a floppy when all else fails.

Where the magic jumper on that system might
be exceeds my expertise.

There may be some useful info hiding
somewhere under
http://ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/Alpha/firmware/
like:
http://ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/Alpha/firmware/archive/astn500.html

You may need to find a hardware manual to
identify the jumper (if there is one).
The user guide link here could be
informative:

http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/workstations/retired/a500series.html

http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/download/ek_alph5_ui_b01.pdf

If it catches fire, it's not my fault.

[wassa]

Have already found how to boot from the floppy via the inboard switches. But, it only gets to trying to read the floppy. Also, the solutions from the links refer to booting from the SRM or ARC and that is where the main problem lies - i cannot get to these prompts.

There is nothing being displayed to the screen.

[Steven Schweda]

Is anything happening at the (appropriate)
serial port? I know that my XP1000 systems
throw something to the graphics card even
when using a serial console, but it might be
worth a look. (The failsafe loader might be
more simple-minded.)

Knowing nothing, I'd say that it's a good
sign that the system is trying to read the
floppy. What's on that floppy?

[John Gillings]

wassa,

>While upgrading a Alphastation 500
>firmware it failed while programming
>the SRM.

Power failure?

If your flash ROM has been wiped, you can't boot enough to reprogram it.

It will require a hardware engineer to perform the magic incantations to recover the console.

Please log a service case with your local Customer Support Centre.

[wassa]

Thanks for all the advice, but I have finally got the machine to boot from the floppy and restore the ROM.

As it turned out, the floppy drive was defective and after swapping it the machine finally booted.

Now just have to solve what an INVALID MODE is: e7.e6.Invalid mode

[Steven Schweda]

> INVALID MODE

Only a guess, but I'd check the Ethernet
interface settings (">>>show e*mode"?).

A quick "set ewa0_mode xxx" (or similar) may
be just what you need after a fresh firmware
installation.

[wassa]

Thanks guys for all the help. The original problem turned out to be the firmware on the V5.4 CD. The machine failed to program the SRM image. Firmware CD's V5.3 and even V5.9 loaded perfectly.

So, machine is up and running again.

[wassa]

Problem was with the Firmware CD. Thanks for all the help.