From: Shane.F.Smith@Healthnet.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 3:22 PM
To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject: Re: AlphaStation 200 firmware update problem - Success &
summary

I have managed to get my AlphaStation 200 4/166 working. Thanks to all that
helped with this one, particularly Hoff, Dave Froble and Terry Kennedy.
Here's a summary of the process in case anyone else gets into the same
situation.

The AlphaStation had the Windoze compatible AlphaBios loaded, and when I
tried use the firmware update to put the SRM console up instead the screen
blanked and the keyboard stopped responding. The machine had to be
rebooted, and the monitor had to be power cycled to get a picture back.

Problem one: The display. The ZXLp-E2 card I have uses dip switches on the
back to set its display mode. When the firmware update started, it was
trying to go to the set display mode, and my monitor couldn't handle it.
The solution was to set the switches to down/up/down/up from the card's
point of view (it's upside-down in the Alphastation), which puts it in
800x600x60hz, which just about any monitor can handle. (If anyone's got the
key to these switch settings, I'd be interested in getting a copy.) This
gave me a black screen display with a white block cursor at bottom left
when the firmware update software was started.

Problem two: The keyboard was still unresponsive. It turned out the machine
was using the serial port as a console. This was solved by running a
standard PC (hawk, spit) null modem cable between COM1 on a PC (hawk, spit)
and the top serial port on the Alpha. Microshaft's hyper terminal sucks,
but it did the job. It needs to be set on COM1, 9600 baud, and the rest can
be left at the defaults. The firmware update worked fine from there. - So
far, this is the only serious use I've found for a PC (hawk, spit).

Problem three: 24 meg isn't enough to boot the SRM - it stackdumps with a
"not enough memory" error. An extremely expensive trip to several local
techie stores eventually turned up what seem to be the last two 32-meg
parity simms in the western world. 70ns would apparently have done, but all
that was available was 60ns and they did the trick. The SRM now gets all
the way through the self test, and gets me to the dead sargeant prompt with
64meg, 80meg or 88meg. (I tried a few different configs). Interestingly,
although apparently not certified for this beast, 4meg simms do seem to
work ok in it. Once the dead sargeant appears, the Alphastation's own
keyboard starts working again and the PC (hawk, spit) can be shut down.

Problem four: Although my SCSI Toshiba 24x CD-Rom seems to work on the
machine, I can't find my @#$^ VMS installation CD. This one I'm still
working on. A friend tells me he has a VMS 7.2 CD somewhere, so it should
be solved quite soon.

A word of warning; if shopping for hard drives for these beasts, don't
settle for the ones that need a converter card to allow them to accept a
50pin SCSI cable. They only fit in one of the bays, and they're so fiddly
to get in there that you usually jiggle the card loose.