[93] in Hotline Meeting
Hardware problem with new RT server
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (salemme@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Wed Apr 18 18:47:21 1990
From: salemme@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
To: hotline@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 90 18:47:01 EDT
IBM RT/PC in private cluster in Building E52, Room 364 won't boot
from the floppy drive A.
Location: Immediately on your left as you enter the room
Serial number: 6150 260014024
Hostname: merchant.mit.edu
Background: This is a new machine, and we are trying to install Athena
software on it for the first time. It has three disk drives (1 70Mb, and
2 310Mb) which have not yet been formatted (so, booting from disk is not
an option).
Symptoms: When trying to boot from an Athena boot floppy, the machine
hangs with "89" flashing. (This happened with 3 different boot floppies.)
We were able to boot from the Diagnostic floppy-- the diagnostics showed
there is a hardware problem either with the diskette drive (A) or with
its "adapter". (I didn't write the message down, because I wanted to repeat
the test, but...) Now, the system won't boot from the Diagnostic floppy.
Suggestion: If the machine is covered under warrenty or a service agreement,
ask IBM to come check the floppy drive and its "adapter". (If it's not under
any warrenty or service agreement, we should try to find a spare RT that we
can take the floppy drive and adapter from.)
