any DEC Alpha folks on here

[Technomage]

On Monday 23 January 2006 20:54, Richard Wilson wrote:
> TMH,
>
> I once spent a long evening upgrading the FW on some DEC Server 1000's
> and 1000A's and the events made a good story.
>
> The FW update on some of the boxes failed in the middle right after the
> point of no return where it warns you about not power cycling the server
> while it updates or you may end up with an unusable system.  A panic
> call to Dec tech support eventually got me to someone who knew what was
> going on.  He asked for details of the server hardware and then asked:
> "Promise me you won't laugh..."
>
> I told him I'd try not to.
>
> He then told me to remove all the DE500 NIC's from the affected servers
> and apply the firmware update again.  I howled with laughter (I was a
> bit punchy by this time) and asked him how in the world did they figure
> this fix out.
>
> It appears that some smart field service techs noted that the firmware
> updates only failed when a DE500 NIC was in place and tried successfully
> to remove them, do the FW update and replace them.  I went ahead and
> asked if they had determined the root cause for this, and was told, yes,
> but you'd need a PHD in electronics to understand it.
>
> I don't know if this relates to your problem at all, but I pass it along
> just in case.
>
> Hope it does help,
>
> Richard Wilson

Tichard, well. no. it doesn't. I am talking soem bare bones systems here (cpu, 
ram, vid card, thats about it).

I have one additional issue on the other (working box), I can't seem to get 
the srm firmware to recognize that a second NIC is installed. bootup in BSD 
says its there but "not configured" and it won't allow me to configure it. :/

ah well..... anyone else with ideas?