HELP - UNIX-pc won't boot!

Gregg Orangio gorangio at pitstop.West.Sun.COM
Thu May 18 05:43:59 AEST 1989


I had my UNIX-PC for about 5 months now.  Bought used from 
an ex-ATT employee.  It's been a great system, till lately.
I've used it only intermittently(once a week) the first few
months.  Since I didn't have a good surge-protector, I powered
it up and down when I put it to use.  Now that I'm using it
regularly and got the protection, I've kept it up for about
2-3 weeks.  After shutting it down to move it, re-booting
failed.  Nothing but little filled boxes diplaying on the
screen.

Sooo, run the diags.  I tried the "reboot the system" choice
in diags and got the following:

	#HDERR ST:1 EF:4 CL:FF00 CH:FF00 SN:FF00 SC:FF02 SDH:FF20 SMACNT:FFFF SCRREG:F0 MCRREG:8F00
	#HDERR ST:1 EF:4 CL:FF00 CH:FF00 SN:FF00 SC:FF02 SDH:FF20 SMACNT:FFFF SCRREG:F0 MCRREG:8F00
	#HDERR ST:1 EF:4 CL:FF00 CH:FF00 SN:FF00 SC:FF02 SDH:FF20 SMACNT:FFFF SCRREG:F0 MCRREG:8F00
	panic: iinit

Next I ran the entire complement of diags from the sub-system
menus since the full system test failed on the hard-drive
test.  Everything else passes.  The hard drive failure was:

   Test:  Hard disk test (Drive 0)
Subtest:  ??? (seek or read)
  Error:  WINCHESTER: Can't Recal: Response = 10
    Enter y[Y] to Abort, Return to continue:

So I opened up the case and removed the drive since I was
not sure that I could hear it spinning (my fans are louder than
the disk).  It's a Seagate ST-251 and was spinning fine.
After putting everything back together, I re-ran the floppy
diags "system reboot".  This time the following errors appear:

    #HDERR ST:51 EF:10 CL:FF00 CH:FF00 SN:FF00 SC:FF02 SDH:FF20 SMACNT:FFFF DCRREG:90 MCRREG:8300
    #HDERR ST:51 EF:10 CL:FF00 CH:FF00 SN:FF00 SC:FF02 SDH:FF20 SMACNT:FFFF DCRREG:90 MCRREG:8300
	    <Note: only two this time>
    panic:iinit

    Please record panic message.
    Press hardware reset to reboot.

<press hardware reset>
Nothing but "little filled boxes"!!

I tried loading in the floppy disk system, but it requires
the hard disk!!  This doesn't seem right, but everytime it
reads the second floppy (Floppy File System) it fails with
the above disk errors!

HELP!!!
Is there a way to boot a mini-UNIX from floppy???  Can I get
to my hard disk from there?
Of course, I have NOT backed-up everything!  Now that would
take too much time.  I do have most everything on floppies,
but I have made some mods (like HDB & PCOMM set-ups, some new
code, etc, etc).  Is there any way to get some of the stuff
off??


    Gregg Orangio			Systems Software Engineer
    Sun Microsystems			sun!sunpix!gregg
    Visualization Products Group	(919)469-8300
    Research Triangle Park, NC



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