On Mon, 20 Aug 2001, Dante wrote:

> Hello, I am Dante and I have a DEC station 5000/240 as well as two DEC
> 5000/25s (a project for when I have more drives).
> I had hoped that my first post here would have been a happier one.
> Unfortunately I am having severe problems with the install process on the
> 5000/240.
> I do not have a CD burner to generate install media, and since the system
> has the buggy k5.1b prom which will not boot ftp my only choice is to use
> an diskimage install.
> For the disk image install I have only an x86 machine running linux/win98.
> Using the x86 netbsd or openbsd boot floppies I am able to dd the
> diskimage.gz to the hard drive for the 5k. Booting any diskimage prior to
> the current snapshot my system will lock up (1.5.1 gets the farthest which
> is the console selection prompt but will go no farther).
> Using the the current snapshot I am able to boot the system and run the
> install program.
> Ftp dies after downloading approximately 2.2 meg . I tried splitting the
> base.tgz and bringing it across in 100k chunks. The kernel traps(panics?)
> after streaming approximately 2.2 meg with cat (I think this is accurate,
> my calculations show it may very well be 7.06 meg). I tried using ftp to
> download the kern.tgz (as it falls below 2.2 meg size limit) to manually
> install it, unfortunately it expands to something like 2.6 meg, so the
> kernel traps and reboots.
> NFS will mount but will not allow file transfers (It is possible it is a
> misconfiguration on my part, but since it works on other systems I do not
> think so). NFS does not trap and reboot, it  simply locks up the system,
> with no error message.
> I have tried using the diskimage to setup my system's final label and
> slices. Unfortunately these are not recognized by the NetBSD on my x86,
> which means I cannot manually set up the packages.
> I was hoping someone would have some advice on this problem.
> I will happily provide any system information people can tell me how to
> obtain, as I do not currently know much about this type of hardware.
>
> Thanks,
> Dante
>
>


	Sounds like hardware troubles. You might want to run the PROM
memory test program for a few hours. The MS02 memory SIMMS have low
contact forces, so sometimes need contact (both slot pins and sockets on
SIMM) cleaning This is especially true if they have been moved around
recently.
	If you install a new SIMM in a previously empty slot whose
contacts have been plated with 8 years of smog/crud/corruption you are
almost guaranteed to have trouble...

I doubt that it is a software issue:

I've had 1.5.1 up for a long time on a
5000/33:

doober:/usr/users/pcw> uptime
 3:40PM  up 154 days, 31 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.14, 0.09, 0.08


Plus I've done diskimage installs on 5000/240s and 260s with very llittle
trouble...


Peter Wallace
Mesa Electronics