[rescue] New toys

[Steve Hatle]

All,

Today I came into possession of two DEC 2100's - Alpha 2100's. 4/200 to be
precise. Both seem to be complete; one attempts to boot (MOP boot- it
doesn't appear to try the disk that is installed), the other doesn't. Each
has 2 CPU's of apparently 200 Mhz each, and the one box that comes up
appears to have 64 meg of RAM. I assume the other is configured similarly.

So- how to troubleshoot the one that doesn't come up? It appears to be
getting power at the power supply on the back, but pressing the on button on
the front doesn't do anything. I did find the interlock that keeps the
machine from starting if the side is open, but that doesn't appear to be the
problem. I didn't have the time to do a lot of poking around inside- I'm
hoping you all can save me from a Homer "Doh!" kind of solution after poking
around the guts for a while <grin>.

I have found the page at Hpaq that has some doc and firmware updaters, etc.
I haven't done my RTFM homework yet, I know. I was hoping for for
congratulations/sympathies/suggestions on what to do with these beasties. If
nothing else, can I put the CPU's and memory from the one into the other and
go quad CPU? I'm not much of a DEC guy- I'm still having fun playing with my
SS1000's. A nice *BSD I'm thinking, once I find out if/which one of them has
SMP support for this platform.

Comments appreciated,

Steve

P.S. Both have stickers that say "Trash" on them. A momento from their
former owners I guess. Means that if both boxes get running, hostnames will
probably have to be "oscar" and "grouch" :-)