Hi again,

folks, I couldn't wait any longer. Got home from work a little 
earlier than normal and decided to power up one of my vaxen,
you know, the 6000-420 that we were talking about earlier.
We had gone through the power stuff enough in theory. I still
haven't got the right receptacle, but I simply opened the plug
and removed it. I removed some of the insulation, opened my
circuit breaker box in my garage, ripped out the washer-dryer
line and stuck the black and brown wires into the 220 V breaker.
I wired the two black ones together so that those went in one
phase and the red one into the other phase. I left blue (neutral)
open and I left protective ground open just for now.

Then I powered up the breaker, pushed in the main T-shaped
switch, measured the receptacles real quick to find the 
typical odd pattern of potentials. Then I stuck in the key and
turned to "STANDBY".

And there the blowers went on and indicator lights were on too.
BTW the sound of the blowers was very nice. Not loud at 
all, very calm. Anyway, my lower switch was set to "AUTOSTART"
and I left it that way. With the upper switch at STANDBY I
had a red standby light on and the red FAULT light was also
on. FAULT doesn't sound too good or does it? While I had
the backdoor open I saw one of the DC regulators with the 
green "CH OK" light on but the other two were off. Hmm,
time to read the manual (I have a VAX 6000-400 Owner's 
Manual, if you need a copy, let me know).

The manual said that the FAULT light is on during selftest
and is expected to go off sometime (it didn't say how 
long it might take though.) So, I took my heart in both
hands and turned the upper switch once more to ENABLE.
Now the yellow ENABLE light went on and the green RUN
light went on too. RUN was on, then it flashed, and 
went off again. FAULT was on all the time. Also the other 
two DC regulators had CH OK on now. Aha, this is as 
advertized: the standby position only powers the memory
(i.e., half of the XMI cage), not the processors and not the
VAXBI. BTW, on the back I had a red light besides the 
ethernet port, that light was flashing sometimes, but not
often (no ethernet was actually hooked up, but I did 
test with an AUI-2-TP transceiver and saw a green POLARITY
and POWER light.)

I also put in a tape, just to see whether it would do
something. The tape operation was as expected, "open
handle", stick in tape, "tape in use" ... but nothing
exiting happened. Pushed the "unload" button waited 
until green light came on, removed tape, thank you.

Time to hook up a terminal to see whether I would get any
messages, after all that's what I was doing this for. I had
a box of adapters so I took a D-25 to RJ something adapter 
with one of those Cisco rollover flat wires hooked into
a RJ something to D-9 adapter on my laptop. (I have used
the RJ to D-9 adapter before and I know it works as a 
NULL modem just fine.) My terminal at 9600 bps did not 
show anything however. I powered the system down and --
nice and slow -- up again. No signs of life on the terminal.
Not sure if the D-25 male port on the back of the VAX is
wired as a DTE or a DCE. Since it is a computer I thought
it would be a DTE, but maybe not. Also I don't really know 
how those D-25 to RJ something adapters were wired. So
I popped the latter adapter open and exchanged pin 2 and 3
(RX and TX). Still no luck.

But as I was fiddling with the terminal plug the tape drive
acted strangely. It toggled between "tape in use" and 
"pull handle" as if it thought it still had a tape inside.
Then I heard a soft beep once or twice. Could have been
the tape alerting. 

However, I was focusing on the terminal thing and as I 
swapped the RX and TX lines and plugged the D25 back in
I think I have seen stuff blinking strangely, as if power
was low. Shortly after that all power was shut off. I 
checked the supply box and obviously the relay was still
on. Turning the key off and on would produce the clicking
sound of the relay. But no lights, nothing. I did not
smell anything suspiciously (like fried components). And
my working with the terminal plug certainly hasn't caused
the power failure.

The time the system was powered and acting was about 
15 to 30 minutes.

Now, 45 minutes later I just tried again. No luck. So,
I guess I have broken something more seriously. Too bad.
I'm not devastated because I have both a spare machine 
and spare parts and I think the problem can still be 
repared as it must be in the power control module. But it
is a major set back because I won't risk my other
machine and I now have to figure out what went wrong
and how I can repair the problem. Also, YOU should be 
VERY careful if you have only one machine. Do not try
what I tried unless you believe to know what I did wrong
or what might have gone wrong without any mistake on
my part.

So, let us gather some theories about what might have
gone wrong with it. Anyone with a working 6000 system
please let us know:

- Was it O.K. that the FAULT light never went off? I think
  it was probably O.K. since there is no boot device
  whatsoever. 

- Please give some specifics about the power up procedure. How 
  long is the FAULT light on? Until system goes into 
  console mode? Or until a first quick round of selftest?

- Will it ever go into console mode if it's set to AUTOMATIC
  boot and can't find a boot device?

- Might the strange acting of the tape have something to do
  with it trying to tell me that it really wants to boot
  and since the tape is the only bootable device present,
  it wants a booting tape?

- How is the console plug on the back wired? As a DCE or a DTE?
  (To avoid misunderstandings, does one need a null-modem to
  hook up a laptop's RS232 port or is a straight-through cable
  required?)

I believe that none of the above things has to do with the
eventual breakdown. The real crucial questions now are:

- What caused the power failure? Why after 15 or more minutes
  of what seemed like reasonable behavior of all observable
  components?

- How can the failure possibly be fixed?

- Should I have chosen a different hookup? Like leave on line
  open, like connecting the NULL wire? Like swapping some
  wires in some way?

- How will we ever find out so that we can try this again
  without loosing yet another machine?

I still hope the machine isn't lost but everything is now
much harder.

regards
-Gunther
  

-- 
Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D.                    gschadow@regenstrief.org
Medical Information Scientist      Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
Adjunct Assistent Professor        Indiana University School of Medicine
tel:1(317)630-7960                         http://aurora.regenstrief.org