[rescue] DG AViiON AV8500 info requested

[Carl R. Friend]

    On Mon, 17 Sep 2007, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> Did you try the obvious like pull and re-install all of those
> boards?

    Yes.  All the normal troubleshooting steps for unknown machines
were followed including basic cleaning (necessitating the removal
of all the boards to get at the lower card-cage grille which was
caked with "fur"), "shortening the system" (removal of any non-
essential components), and reseating of all boards, daughter-boards,
and connectors.  Voltages seem OK (although not checked; +5 and +12
seem OK because the disk spun up).  There may be issues with the
cabling of the console Dasher terminal; I've got that problems here
at home with a Dasher and a Desktop Generation 20 that I cannot
for the life of me get to work together,

> Also, two Aviion websites that I have bookmarked say that this
> machine will refuse to boot if the battery is dead.

    That's what my suspicion is at the moment based on an earlier
comment by Mr. Stricklin.  I'll need to procure a replacement
NVRAM chip before I proceed further.  I am not amused that the
failure of a battery can cause a fatal condition.

> Just curious, do you have the 88K based 8500, or the Pentium based
> 8500+?

    It's got a pait of 88k chips on the CPU board which is in the
leftmost slot.  There's a filler panel in the next-to-leftmost slot,
followed by a "double-wide" memory card with two layers of daughter-
boards attached to it.  The I/O controller (IOC) is another double-
wide with daughter-baords that obscure the NVRAM chip.

    Cheers!

+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:crfriend at rcn.com                        +---------------------+
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