More 3B2/400 Blues!

[Charlie Lear]

Thanks to the people who've mailed me so far about the second-hand
3B2/400 that I obtained for running a public access Usenet site.

Well, the worst thing occurred: after getting most of the software
ported onto it, we noticed a few problems on Thursday. The system
wouldn't let you log in. Example:
 bearcave!Console_login: root
 password:
 login:

Hmmm. The system wasn't recognising passwords. Wouldn't even let you
log in as uucp or anything (which don't have passwords yet). Time
for a reboot.

Up it comes, except now it doesn't even ask for a password:
 bearcave!Console_login: root
 bearcave!Console_login:

Argh! Reboot again.
 SELF-CHECK
 DIAGNOSTICS
 SYSTEM FAILURE: Refer to your System Administrator Utilities Guide

Which, of course, says zilch about anything concerned with System
Failures. 

Try to get it into firmware mode, and it simply doesn't want to
know. One piece of email that was in my box this morning from Joe
Zeigler at AT&T who advises that firmware mode requires space or no
parity. We've been running the terminals at 7E1 (don't ask why, we
bought it that way) and this may be a cause of not being able to get
into monitor mode. Doesn't fix the system failure though.

Anyways, the machine is being examined this weekend by a very
supportive fellow from the local AT&T distributors. Hopefully he'll
find the problem. Hopefully it will be minor, like a shot battery.

I'll be sending email to everyone who replied to my original post.
I'll find out on Monday whether I've just blown a couple of thousand
bucks. Other than that, I discovered there are around 12 3B systems
in New Zealand, none of which I've made contact with yet and none of
which (so Olivetti tell me) are running anything more recent than
Sys V 3.0.
 
Keep the email coming! 
 
Regards
 Charlie Lear  ( clear at actrix.co.nz )