on 2/3/00 8:16 AM, Stefan at stefan@softhome.net wrote:

> Hmm the orange light does come on. It first says 83 BOOT SYS (if i'm
> correct) and then it says ?4D DEVOFFLINE. Hmm maybe the diskdrive is faulty ??
> 
> Hmm its not as simple as I thought it would be :(
> 
> Stefan.
> 
> At 18:27 2-2-00 -0500, you wrote:

    Hmm, me thinks that you should not be seeing the DEVOFFLINE. On my VS, I
get:

b dua2

83 BOOT SYS
84 FAIL or RESTART SYS, or occasionally FILESTRUCT DUA2

    Try typing t 70 at the >>> and pick the ID of your floppy, then enter
the type to try and format a blank floppy in the drive. If that works then
your floppy is good and it just doesn't like the boot program. If it doesn't
work, try pulling out all the connectors and reseating them. Like I said, I
was baffled when I couldn't get my disk to work, but it turned out the power
connector wasn't "clicked" all the way in. If you hear the disk spinning and
the orange light comes on, then your power is good. Then I would test the
switch closest to the center of the drive in the group of two switches to
make sure that it is working. As it senses when a disk is in the drive. I do
recall my RX23' having some oxidation inside the switch, but depressing it
manually a few times seemed to clear it up. If the floppy formats, your
golden. Otherwise I would suspect a problem with the drive itself or the
controller card.
    I also just remembered that there is some sort of sliding selector
switch on the side of the drive closest to the power connector. I 'm not
100% sure, but I imagine that it is the drive # selector. Since the VAX has
its ID # hardwired to DUA2 this switch should be set to 0. (closest to the
power connector) Just a thought.


    Chris