Halleluja! We have installed OpenVMS!

The CD ROM read errors from the previous day were down to SCSI (mis?)configuration. I had the cable attached to the storage array in two places, and I think that must have been incorrect. Removing the second connection allowed the OpenVMS 8.4 Alpha installation CD ROM to run to completion. This took a couple of hours to run, the CD ROM being a very slow unit.

Once it completed, the machine rebooted and came up by itself, offering the VERY long-awaited experience of the login prompt:

BUT, the fun's not quite over:

a) the clock on the I/O board must be faulty because it never remembers the date from boot to boot. OpenVMS prompts for the date at each startup, meaning it can't be left alone to boot. DALLAS chip surgery is required. See earlier posts for details.

b) I need to know if the EV5 CPUs have any life in them. Getting either the existing I/O card upgraded for EV5s or getting one of the several other ones I have working for EV5 is the next challenge...

c) ...

New I/O card and CPUs => SRM boot!

Over the last few months, I'd received a couple 'new' I/O cards but had no further success booting. My thinking is that perhaps *all* my I/O cards have EV4 firmware and won't boot the EV5 CPUs.

So I bit the bullet and picked up two EV4 275 Mhz CPUs from Ebay. I stuck one in, along with a VT510 terminal and voila, life!

The SRM console came up!

I viewed the devices present with show dev and saw the CD ROM showing as dka600. I put the Alpha 8.4 install disk in and was told the firmware was out of date:

I obtained the firmware 5.3 disk image and burned it on a macbook pro using Disk Utility. Selecting the defaults resulted in a successful firmware upgrade.

Having upgraded the firmware (via the CD ROM), I eagerly slapped in the install disk (also burned on the macbook pro) but found it continually causing read errors during boot. Progress, but no cigar...