>
> Paul Antoine wrote:
>
>
> <image of a machine sitting in a corner all by itself, plugged in but
> not turned on!>
>
That is _amazling_ accurate ... it's sitting under the table in the corner
of my "computer lab" at home. It's probably for the best though - if it
were up on top it could see all the other machines that get to actually do
something! :-)
> Hmmm... I'm feeling better about the possibility of getting your
> machine going, at least to the point of making something print on the
Cool!
> console! In peering at the Mach 3.0 code, and the header files in the
> standard RISC/OS kernel binary release, it became apparent that early
> DEC MIPS designs were based *very* heavily on the workstations from
> MIPS themselves. The DS3100's prom calls are near identical to those
> of the MIPS 3230's...
>
> So it would strike me as entirely possible that the 5100 is very
> similar to a 3100.
>
That would make a lot of sense, since as I remember DEC positioned this beast
as the replacement for the 3100, or at least to _us_ they did! I'm actually
the one who bought the thing in the first place, and had originally gotten
quotes on a 3100 and was all set to order one when the 5100 came out, so I
ended up with this instead.
> (snip)
> Thinking about your problem some more: it's entirely possible that in
> the boot PROM of your machine is a jump table of useful functions, but
> that jump table may be a little different from the 3100's (albeit
> modelled on the MIPS machines). We should probably write a small
> program to disassemble the PROM...
Based on what's been on the list, and my experiece with the previous
kernels, I've suspected all along that a PROM call was probably the
culprit. Of course, the lack of any output is also a clue!
I _do_ have a working Ultrix 4.5 system on this box, complete with GCC and
friends, so I would be more than happy to try compiling and running a
"PROM finder" program.
>
> Another thing you could do is describe the hardware of your machine a
> bit. Have you taken the lid off your machines? Can you describe how
> the boards are arranged? Does it have a motherboard with the CPU,
> ether etc., and optional QBUS slots, or are devices like SCSI and
> ether on QBUS cards??
OK this is from my memory of when I last opened the beast, and that was
over a year ago. One thing for certain - there is no QBUS (or any other
bus) in the box. (I think the web page is wrong on this point BTW.) The
only slot it has is for a serial interface card, which I believe was
specific to this one system. It added like 4 async and 1 sync interface
I believe (it already has 4 async ports). Everything else is on the
motherboard - Ethernet (10Base2 & AUI), SCSI, etc.
I'll try and open it up again tonight if I get a chance.
>
> > KN230 V1.4
> > 08-00-2b-1d-3a-20
> > 0x800000
> > >>
>
> Do you have a list of the commands that the boot prom accepts? What
> does it print when you type '?' or 'help'?
>
I'll have to get you this ....
Oh - one other clue - the command to boot using TFTP follows the 2100/3100
convention, which perhaps suggests that the PROM is similar to the 3100's.
> > Linux kernel-hacker-wannabee!
>
> Resistance is useless... :-)
>
It's funny really. This box only has 8 (!) meg of RAM (I think - can't
remeber!) and 2 207 meg hard disks, so chances are it will never really do
anything "useful". But it sure will be cool to see it running Linux!
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