there had been a thread about this on port-vax some months ago.. yes, 
IIRC, the problem was fixed in some late-model 1.5/current version and is 
fixed in 1.6. 



On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Jonas Ohlsson wrote:

> Just for the record, my VAXstation 4000/96 is happily running 1.6-RELEASE
> and autobooting, so I guess that either this bug has been eradicated in
> 1.6 or the bug is not present on the 4000/96.
> 
> Best regards,
> Jonas Ohlsson
> 
> On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Lord Isildur wrote:
> 
> > this is a case of the infamous rom munching that happened as a result of
> > a mis-probe for a DZ11, (right?)... something in the netbsd autoconf
> > probes would walk on some addresses which in a 4k90 were in the rom, and
> > in just the right mode so as to clobber them. The problem is not fatal,
> > though we dont know how to fix a broken rom. it doesnt seem to break
> > anything except autobooting- the monitor will find an error and halt,
> > instead of autoboot.. manually booting will work fine.
> >
> > isildur
> >
> > On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Baby Peanut wrote:
> >
> > > Now autostart has become hosed after running
> > >
> > > ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/vax/kernels/boot.mop.991023
> > >
> > > Seems I'm not the first one see the USENET post below.
> > >
> > > Any ideas how to correct this?
> > >
> > > ----------------------
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Message-ID: <3BA5A53E.38F3@DECUS.DECUS.DE>
> > > From: Bernhard Wulf <WULF@DECUS.DECUS.DE>
> > > Organization: without any ...
> > > X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.03C (WinNT; I)
> > > MIME-Version: 1.0
> > > Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
> > > Subject: VAX 4000-90 trouble after testing NETBSD CD with error ?? 000 8 sys
> > > 0512 in POST
> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> > > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> > > Lines: 60
> > > Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 09:24:46 +0200
> > > NNTP-Posting-Host: 172.17.100.209
> > > X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@is.shell.com
> > > X-Trace: wwwserv3.shell.nl 1000711509 172.17.100.209 (Mon, 17 Sep 2001 09:25:09
> > > MET DST)
> > > NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 09:25:09 MET DST
> > >
> > >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > hope I'm right here, to ask some questions about
> > > the NetBSD port and some hardware details to VAX 4000-90 ?
> > >
> > > What happend...
> > >
> > > There was a time, a happy 4000-90 running OpenVMS7.x
> > > doing the POST ( power on selftest ) without fatal ( ?? )
> > > or nonefatal ( ? ) errors, did an autostart like configured
> > > in BOOTDEV and started without any further trouble in OpenVMS...
> > >
> > > Then I tried out my freshly burned NETBSD CD-Rom on that VAX.
> > > The ISO image I used had the following name /description "VAX BOOT
> > > 1.5.1"
> > > Everything worked fine, hardware detection, boot up to installation.
> > > I stopped here without writing stuff to disks.
> > >
> > > After that, the VAX is a bit confused now...
> > >
> > > The POST will give an error like "?? 000 8 sys 0512" and the
> > > autostart didn't work anymore ( the error is fatal ).
> > > Giving ">>> boot" will bring up VMS like before, no further
> > > problems, errors or messages.
> > > The use of VMS will not delete the problem, I tried to do a set time,
> > > various set's on the bootprompt ( >>> ). Also I deleted the entire
> > > NVRAM... no way to get rid of the message.
> > >
> > > By the way, this error is not mentioned in the 4000-90 docs ?
> > > The FRU part 000 is not assigned,
> > > The 8 / SYS test is used for "other system functions", a deeper
> > > look will end up with a "system ROM test" which
> > > "Checks the system ROMs one byte at a time to ensure that they
> > > contain the correct manufacturing check data and the correct
> > > checksum."
> > > The subcode of 512 is not assigned to a proper message.
> > >
> > >
> > > I want my AUTOSTART back ;-)
> > >
> > > What did NetBSD on that machine ?
> > >
> > > Are there any sources available to trace the process of hardware
> > > detection and specific 4000-90 things.
> > > Are there adresses in memory NetBsd will write to ?
> > > Highly interesting are regions in the area where NVRam, Flash
> > > or other memories with memory are located.
> > >
> > > I'm not the first one with this trouble, see on Google and use
> > > the error shown above as searchargument...
> > > But the problem seems not to be fixed by now.
> > >
> > > There seems something wrong with NetBSD and VAXStation 4000-90.
> > >
> > > If you need further datails please contact me.
> > >
> > > Have a nice day.
> > >
> > > Bernhard.
> > > wulf@decus(dot)decus(dot)de
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > __________________________________________________
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> >
> 
>