Paul H. Anderson wrote:
> [... replying to questions about the PC164 ...]
> 
> I have one of these already.  Here's what I know about it:
> 
> it has an IDE interface, but can't boot from an IDE disk, at least at SRM
> 4.9.

"boot DQA0" works fine with:
Digital AlphaPC 164 500 MHz Console V5.3-3, Sep 30 1998 13:30:42

That's the one from the firmware/v5.3 directory on ftp.europe.digital.com
(mirror of ftp.digital.com).


But I have a different problem:

On powerup and any isacfg command the console complains "ISA table
corrupt",
even for "isacfg -init".

Setting boot_osflags, bootdef_dev and ewa0_mode takes ca. 1 second
(is this normal?  I can't remember ever seeing a delay on a DEC 3000,
PWS or AXPpci33), and sometimes it forgets the values, I didn't yet
figure out the conditions for that.

The RTC seems to work, it's usually off by a second when the box was
switched off.

The problem exists since I replaced the ARC with SRM (the box was
running Redhat + Windows when I bought it).

Did anybody experience something like this before?
Is is likely that the battery or the flash is defective?

Is there a way to clear the flash _completely_, including
any space that might be used for the variables?

joerch