Cube giving "Error 84" messages? HELP - everything is crumbling...
John E. Ray
2 Days ago I installed 4 4MB SIMMS in my '040 cube in the 12-15 slots.
I booted it once, everything was fine.
Today I started the machine for the first time, and within minutes, it
crashed, and my internal drive was corrupted. I tried to boot off of
an optical disk. Unfortunately, that didn't work quite how I wanted...
I tried to break out of the boot, and corrupted the optical disk. So...
now I go to try to boot from a floppy, since I'm pretty much up a
creek at this point. I apparently hooked the floppy cable wrong and it goes
poof, and makes a little bit of smoke.
Now, at this point (since the drive first got corrupted), the machine
has been running for about 4 hours, with the back off, and no fan.
I managed to get it to boot *once* from CD-ROM (don't know how I did
this... it was the only time I managed to do it). Restarted the
computer, and got an Error 84 during the self test. This seems
to come after "ECC" (whatever that is), and before "RTC" (also unknown).
This error just kept coming up. I ended up putting the back back
on the machine, and shut it down for a few minutes. Turned it
back on... no error... restarted serveral times, and only got the
error twice out of 15ish tries.
In fact, after typing that last sentence, I went back and powered
up the Cube (which has been off for 20 mins now) and went thru the
self test at least 10 times with no error. My main concern at this
point is that I screwed something up (other than the floppy) by
plugging the floppy cable in wrong. The Cube didn't really seem
to mind, tho' I doubt the floppy will function again.
Okay... now, does anyone have any suggestions on how to get my
machine back online? It goes to boot, and fails within one second
with a "Exception #2 at such-n-such address". I have no idea
how I got it to boot off the NS3.3 install CD... I've tried:
bsd(1,0,0)sdmach rootdev=sd1 w/ the CD set to the 2nd SCSI position,
and bsd(0,0,0)sdmach rootdev=sd0 w/ it set to ID 0.
Could I do a SCSI copy of the CD to a harddrive, and boot from
there?
Also... I would really like to buy a floppy drive, with cables, etc
to hook up to by Cube... does anyone have one they'd like to sell?
I'm not sure if there is an external drive which will hook to the
SCSI port or the such, but if there is, thats the route I'd like to
take.
Thanks for any and all help,
John Ray
--
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John E. Ray "You're only a loser while you believe you're a loser,
ray...@osu.edu after that you're a self-delusional fool"
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Network Specialist I The Ohio State University Extension
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Mike Paquette
>2 Days ago I installed 4 4MB SIMMS in my '040 cube in the 12-15 slots.
>I booted it once, everything was fine.
>Today I started the machine for the first time, and within minutes, it
>crashed, and my internal drive was corrupted. I tried to boot off of
>an optical disk. Unfortunately, that didn't work quite how I wanted...
>I tried to break out of the boot, and corrupted the optical disk. So...
>now I go to try to boot from a floppy, since I'm pretty much up a
>creek at this point. I apparently hooked the floppy cable wrong and it goes
>poof, and makes a little bit of smoke.
And takes out the floppy controller chip... This can happen with
improperly connected ribbon cables, or with the wrong model of floppy
drive.
FYI, The Sony drive NeXT shipped isn't exactly the same as those
floppys down at Clones-R-Us. It gets power from the ribbon cable.
Many of the generic PC floppys tie the 'unused' power pins to ground.
Be careful out there.
>Now, at this point (since the drive first got corrupted), the machine
>has been running for about 4 hours, with the back off, and no fan.
It's overheated. I guarantee it. The OD will be unreliable until it
cools down.
>I managed to get it to boot *once* from CD-ROM (don't know how I did
>this... it was the only time I managed to do it). Restarted the
>computer, and got an Error 84 during the self test. This seems
>to come after "ECC" (whatever that is), and before "RTC" (also unknown).
>This error just kept coming up.
Error 84 indicates that the Error Correction Code (ECC) self-test is
failing. The OD will be unable to correctly read or write data from
the disk. This is the most common failure mode for the OD when it
overheats.
>I ended up putting the back back
>on the machine, and shut it down for a few minutes. Turned it
>back on... no error... restarted serveral times, and only got the
>error twice out of 15ish tries.
It can take an hour or two to cool down. There's a lot of thermal
mass between the OD, hard disk, and power supply. I suggest aiming a
desk fan into the back of the case (with the Cube powered off) to cool
things down.
>Okay... now, does anyone have any suggestions on how to get my
>machine back online? It goes to boot, and fails within one second
>with a "Exception #2 at such-n-such address".
It's possible for the boot ROM code to get it's internal state totally
goofed up, resulting in this error. A hard reset (Hold down both
command keys, and hit the * key on the keypad) will clear it, and
repeat the power-up sequence in the ROM.
> I have no idea
>how I got it to boot off the NS3.3 install CD... I've tried:
>bsd(1,0,0)sdmach rootdev=sd1 w/ the CD set to the 2nd SCSI position,
>and bsd(0,0,0)sdmach rootdev=sd0 w/ it set to ID 0.
These should work, if your ROM is capable of booting from a CD-ROM.
(It has to be able to understand 2048 byte block devices) Later model
68040 ROMs can do this. 68030 and early 68040 ROMs need the boot
floppy/OD trick.
The Boot Floppy/OD Trick:
Early model ROMs don't grok booting from 2048 bytes per block
devices like CD-ROMs. To work around this, NeXT supplies a boot
floppy which contains a special boot block. The ROM code loads the
boot block from the floppy, and then the loaded boot code (which DOES
grok 2048 byte per block devices) boots the CD-ROM up.
If you can get to a working machine, you can generate your own boot
floppy or OD by putting the boot block image
/usr/standalone/boot.cdrom into the boot block of a NeXT formatted
floppy or OD.
For floppies:
su root
disk -B /usr/standalone/boot.cdrom /dev/rfd0b
For Optical Disks:
su root
disk -B /usr/standalone/boot.cdrom /dev/rod0a
(As a last resort, I've even put the CD-ROM boot block on a SCSI hard
disk, and booted from that to start the CD-ROM based disk building
process. Not recommended if you need to recover data from the hard
disk first...)
>Could I do a SCSI copy of the CD to a harddrive, and boot from
>there?
Not recommended. The hard disk won't be bootable without applying
significant effort. It won't be clear to anyone other than the author
of BuildDisk.app as to what needs to be done to get things working.
:-)
Good Luck!
Mike Paquette
I don't speak for my employer, and they don't speak for me.
mpa...@pbinet.com Personal E-mail
mpa...@next.com NeXT business mail only, please