Re: Please enter date and time then freeze

From: David McKenzie (david.mckenzie_at_paradigm-shift.biz)
Date: 11/18/03 

Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 22:43:10 +1100

ahh,

reminds me of the great sysgen parameter TIMPROMPTWAIT

measured in microfortnights :-) 

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"John Santos" <JOHN@egh.com> wrote in message
news:1031118002129.3301B-100000@Ives.egh.com...
> On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Didier Morandi wrote:
>
> > Soterro wrote:
> >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > I have since today this strange behaviour on this Digital PW 600au,
> > > VMS 7.2-1.
> > >
> > > It is a dualboot machine which until this morning ran under Tru64 for
> > > a longer while. I rebooted it for VMS (in the same way I always did
> > > it) and it asked me for the new date and time, as always. I managed to
> > > enter a few digits then the keyboard froze. Not even the caps lock LED
> > > was lighting when I pressed it. I reset the machine, at the reboot at
> > > the same moment it froze again. Only the keyboard freezes, because the
> > > display asks again and again for the date with new lines, and the
> > > keyboard does nothing. I halted it, booted in Tru64, no problem. Back
> > > into VMS, again freeze. When I pressed halt, all the garbage I typed
> > > came on the screen so it's buffered somewhere in between. So I just
> > > typed at the prompt continue and this time the date was taken
> > > correctly and the boot process went fine (except for the system's
> > > mail.mai suddenly missing and not created when the whatever status
> > > message was sent).
> > >
> > > Anyone experienced this funny situation? If there's something failing
> > > in the machine, what could that be???
> >
> > (as usual)
> > What did change since the last correct reboot?
> >
> > D.
>
> Recent customer with an ES40 had similar (but not identical) problems.
> They only had a graphics console, and if you explicitly set the console
> to "graphics" and booted, it would ask for the date and time and then
> hang.  If you powered off and back on, the console would revert to
> "serial", and if they tried to boot without changing it, it would just
> hang.
>
> Turned out to be a dying battery on the motherboard.
>
> <RANT> Because it kept forgetting the time, and the console kept
> changing from graphics to serial, I suspected a CMOS battery right
> away, but we were misled by the non-HP field circus.  They said the
> ES40 doesn't have a battery, the settings are stored in flash memory,
> which doesn't require power to maintain settings.  They swapped the
> motherboard and it said all the memory was dead.  They swapped in
> another motherboard and got the exact same original symptoms.
> Eventually they swapped the entire CPU cabinet, then started
> back-fitting components to the old cab (while the system was running
> on the new cabinet), to isolate the original problem.  Finally they
> discovered there *was* a battery on the motherboard and it was dead!
> (They claim it wasn't listed as a field-replaceable part in the
> maintenance docs, but it turned out to be easy to replace.)
>
> Bottom line:  Original battery was dead.
> 1st replacement motherboard was badly broken.
> 2nd replacement motherboard had a dead battery.
>
> So if you have any ES40's in southern California, and 3rd-party
> maintenance, don't let them leave until your sure your system
> is working!  Those dead motherboards have probably been recycled
> into their spares kits.
>
> </RANT>
>
> Check the CMOS battery.
>
>
> -- 
> John Santos
> Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc.
> 781-861-0670 ext 539
>

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