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Memory Problem on boot?



Thanks all for the help on educating myself previously.

Now, I have some useful information for digestion. If some would be so kind as to help me out. If there is a better list for this question I would appreciate knowing that as well. I hope to install debian, but I need to hardware to cooperate first.

I have a PC164 with AlphaBIOS. I had a copy of WIN NT4 on it. It worked fine except for a memory timing issue that was fixed in service pack 3. It hasn't been booting. No video, no serial console, usually no beeps(I got it once and it's never been duplicated -- it was 5 or 6 beeps). So I dropped down to the SROM level in order to find out what the board is doing. The debug port display the following sequence:

21164A.01.02.03.04.05.06.07.08.0b.3f.05.3f.05.3f.05.3f.05.3f.05.3f.05.3f.05
...

From the manual:

00 Firmware initialization is complete
01 CPU speed detected
02 CPU speed converted
03 Configuration jumpers read
04 Bcache configuration value computed
05 Bcache control value computed
06 Bcache turned off
07 Memory timing registers written
08 Memory control register written
09 Memory bank 0 register written
0B DRAMs awakened
0C Memory sized and memory bank 0 written
0F Bcache turned on
13 All of memory rewritten (good data parity written)
14 Memory errors cleared; start reading system ROM
3F Fatal error. Second code identifies source of error:
  05 = No memory found
  06 = Checksum error detected when image was
       read back from memory
  07 = Could not determine the SIMM type

It appears this memory initialization is having a problem. I can also duplicate the
problem by removing all the memory.

I also have not yet, checked anything like in power plane to make sure power if correctly being supplied.

If any of you have an idea of what going on or would like help, I
would appreciate it.  One person has suggested that I might need to
upload a new SROM image via the SROM Port/Debug Monitor.

If this is the case does anyone know where a copy of the debug monitor
and/or the srom images can be found(at least for a pc164)?  I assume
that a standard MMJ cable will work fine for uploading (hardware flow control?). Is this right? I had to make a custom cable and a don't have a proper "SROM cable".
I gets the postcodes, but I have not tried anything else.



Philip Thiem -- Icequake.net Administrator
Isn't it obvious lumberjacks love traffic lights?
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