Hi,

I just got a hand-me-down 433a.  I'm not sure its exact configuration, but I 
can't get any video out of it, nor any beeps on boot.  The leds on the system 
board do however flash--indicating that the cpu is functional at least.

So, I hooked up to the serial console and got:

Brk 0 at 0012D37C

0012D37C!BPT

w/no chance at any input--ie I think it's totally hung.

Then I whittled it down, removing the scsi drives, the qlogic scsi card, and 
the video card and turned it on again.  Result:

Brk 0 at 0012D37C

0012D37C!BPT           (New IPL = 30)

Subsequent boots/resets result in the same as the first time.  I also tried 
booting with a keyboard directly attached (as opposed to kvm).  Same thing.
(My kvm is active however.)

Unplugging the keyboard and mouse before booting results in some kind of panic 
and lengthy register dump.

The cdrom drive had a "Alpha Systems Firmware update V5.4" cd in it, also, the 
video card was not screwed in at the back.

Poking around the net, I've learned that on some alphas, changing the video 
card requires a firmware update. I suppose it's possible that someone changed 
the video card, it no longer produced video output, so they attempted to 
update the firmware somehow, botched it and gave up.

But, I really have no information as to this unit's history, and am totally 
new to this hardware.

Furthermore, the leds stop at 0xF8 ("PCI datapath error" according to one doc 
I found).  I have no idea what could cause this nor how to resolve it.

can anyone help?


Nick

p.s. please cc