[parisc-linux] [Q] J200 recovery

[parisc-linux] [Q] J200 recovery

[Christian Suder]

Hello,

apologies upfront as this question is more about HW than parisc-linux, 
but as some pretty knowledgable folks hang out here I though I'll give 
it a shot.

History of the problem:

Got a J200, powered up fine but the firmware could not see the hard 
drive on the FW SCSI. It did find devices on the narrow SCSI. I also put 
in a known good drive on the FW, same thing. Both drives are HP supplied 
  Seagates (HP firmware).

Booted linux off CD and linux found the disk and could use it. 
Installation went with no problem, just could not boot off the HD. I 
could boot the system using the CD and changing root device and ramdisk 
in IPL.

While troubleshooting the boot problem I set the fastboot off - bad idea 
! Now the system stops with FLT 3000 early on.

Googling around I found that this may be a corrupted bootrom, which in 
turn may not be a true flash memory in this machine (can anybody confirm 
this ?). The battery on the mainboard is pretty much dead, but a fresh 
one didn't change anything.

Could it be the FLT 3000 is caused by the battery going dead and the 
system loosing some essential information ?

Any way to recover it ?

Thx,

	Christian

Re: [parisc-linux] [Q] J200 recovery

[Derek Engelhaupt]

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Christian,
It doesn't sound good for you.  If the boot ROM battery went completely dead, things like the Software ID, system model number, and system serial number would be gone.  The only way to recover those things is through an HP tech like myself, but without a service contract the T&M charges are pretty high.  There is a program we run that allows us to reset that information.  The program is not licenced to anyone to run, not even resellers.  HP sued a bunch of companies about 5 years ago for using it to convert older HP UNIX hardware to MPE hardware.  The hardware checks to make sure it has a valid serial number and model number before booting, but from what I remember about cases like this it should still get to the boot handler and not fail so early in the self-test.  Init 3000 is one of the first stages of the self test where the machine starts applying power.  It almost sounds like you have either a system board failure or something wrong in the power sub-systems.  All the fastboot option does is turn the extensive memory tests on or off.  Setting it off would cause the machine to run all the extra memory tests instead of just initializing the memory as with fastboot on.  If you encountered a fault there the fault code would be in the 7xxx range.  A corrupted boot ROM could cause this to happen with the hang at init 3000 since the boot ROM tells the system how to run the self tests.  Unfortunately on HP 9000 systems, once the boot ROM is corrupted, only the factory can reload it which requires us to do a system card replacement.  Bottom line is, looks like the system card is dead and needs to be replaced.  This would require an HP tech to reset the info mentioned earlier on the new system card once installed.
derek
 Christian Suder <csuder@cisco.com> wrote:Hello,

apologies upfront as this question is more about HW than parisc-linux, 
but as some pretty knowledgable folks hang out here I though I'll give 
it a shot.

History of the problem:

Got a J200, powered up fine but the firmware could not see the hard 
drive on the FW SCSI. It did find devices on the narrow SCSI. I also put 
in a known good drive on the FW, same thing. Both drives are HP supplied 
Seagates (HP firmware).

Booted linux off CD and linux found the disk and could use it. 
Installation went with no problem, just could not boot off the HD. I 
could boot the system using the CD and changing root device and ramdisk 
in IPL.

While troubleshooting the boot problem I set the fastboot off - bad idea 
! Now the system stops with FLT 3000 early on.

Googling around I found that this may be a corrupted bootrom, which in 
turn may not be a true flash memory in this machine (can anybody confirm 
this ?). The battery on the mainboard is pretty much dead, but a fresh 
one didn't change anything.

Could it be the FLT 3000 is caused by the battery going dead and the 
system loosing some essential information ?

Any way to recover it ?

Thx,

Christian





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Re: [parisc-linux] [Q] J200 recovery

[Christian Suder]

Thanks Derek,

might have been just coincidence that the fault showed after I switched 
the fastboot. The machine was a freebie so no big deal.

	Christian


Derek Engelhaupt wrote:
> Christian,
> 
> It doesn't sound good for you.  If the boot ROM battery went completely 
> dead, things like the Software ID, system model number, and system 
> serial number would be gone.  The only way to recover those things is 
> through an HP tech like myself, but without a service contract the T&M 
> charges are pretty high.  There is a program we run that allows us to 
> reset that information.  The program is not licenced to anyone to run, 
> not even resellers.  HP sued a bunch of companies about 5 years ago for 
> using it to convert older HP UNIX hardware to MPE hardware.  The 
> hardware checks to make sure it has a valid serial number and model 
> number before booting, but from what I remember about cases like this it 
> should still get to the boot handler and not fail so early in the 
> self-test.  Init 3000 is one of the first stages of the self test where 
> the machine starts applying power.  It almost sounds like you have 
> either a system board failure or someth ing wrong in the power 
> sub-systems.  All the fastboot option does is turn the extensive memory 
> tests on or off.  Setting it off would cause the machine to run all the 
> extra memory tests instead of just initializing the memory as with 
> fastboot on.  If you encountered a fault there the fault code would be 
> in the 7xxx range.  A corrupted boot ROM could cause this to happen with 
> the hang at init 3000 since the boot ROM tells the system how to run the 
> self tests.  Unfortunately on HP 9000 systems, once the boot ROM is 
> corrupted, only the factory can reload it which requires us to do a 
> system card replacement.  Bottom line is, looks like the system card is 
> dead and needs to be replaced.  This would require an HP tech to reset 
> the info mentioned earlier on the new system card once installed.
> 
> derek
> 
>  */Christian Suder <csuder@cisco.com>/* wrote:
> 
>     Hello,
> 
>     apologies upfront as this question is more about HW than parisc-linux,
>     but as some pretty knowledgable folks hang out here I though I'll give
>     it a shot.
> 
>     History of the problem:
> 
>     Got a J200, powered up fine but the firmware could not see the hard
>     drive on the FW SCSI. It did find devices on the narrow SCSI. I also
>     put
>     in a known good drive on the FW, same thing. Both drives are HP
>     supplied
>     Seagates (HP firmware).
> 
>     Booted linux off CD and linux found the disk and could use it.
>     Installation went with no problem, just could not boot off the HD. I
>     could boot the system using the CD and changing root device and ramdisk
>     in IPL.
> 
>     While troubleshooting the boot problem I set the fastboot off - bad
>     idea
>     ! Now the system stops with FLT 3000 early on.
> 
>     Googling around I found that this may be a corrupted bootrom, which in
>     turn may not be a true flash memory in this machine (can anybody
>     confirm
>     this ?). The battery on the mainboard is pretty much dead, but a fresh
>     one didn't change anything.
> 
>     Could it be the FLT 3000 is caused by the battery going dead and the
>     system loosing some essential information ?
> 
>     Any way to recover it ?
> 
>     Thx,
> 
>     Christian
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>     _______________________________________________
>     parisc-linux mailing list
>     parisc-linux@lists.parisc-linux.org
>     http://lists.parisc-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/parisc-linux
> 
> 
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