"John C. Hayward" writes:
 > I attempt to reboot it never even gets to the place where you can see
 > information appear on the screen while booting.  Of about 15 attempts
 > one time it got far enough along to switch fonts in the boot up process.
 > One other time it turned off the 3 green LEDs on the keyboard.  All the
 > other times it just reset the disk and appeard to freeze.

John -

I have had my Multia (or, rather, several of them ;^) fail "mysteriously" 
several times.  The first two times I returmned them to the reseller from 
whom I bought them.  The third time occurred after I had moved and left 
the machine powered off in a closet for three weeks.

I would recommend you grab a copy of the latest firmware from DEC
(http://ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/Alpha/firmware/interim/multia) and put
it on a floppy disk.  Under NetBSD, I used 'dd if=foo.img of=/dev/rfd0a
bs=10240' to write the floppy images.  I found that the machine could be
recovered via the failsafe method detailed on DEC's web site (which 
involves changing a jumper conveniently located under the floppy drive 
bracket assembly) and installing new firmware.  Your mileage may vary. 

Using the failsafe to reload the firmware brought my machine back from 
the dead.  I'd recommend trying it before sending the machine back to the 
retailer.

Contact me if you have any questions.

	-rAT

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