White Box Alpha's and Tru64

[H Vlems]

The white box Alpha's are regular Alpha systems with a slightly
limited srm console. These systems were sold as Windows NT only
systems. The Digital Server 3000 is the equivalent of the Alpha Server
800 and the Digital Server 5305 is a modified Alpha Server 1200. I
have a few 5305's and would like to run Tru64 on them.
VMS runs well on these systems. Adding two srm parameters in the nvram
file makes this work.
Now this won't work with Tru64 on a 5305 for some reason. Tru64 does
work on a Digital Server 3000, same tricks applied.
Has anyone tried this and succeeded in running Tru64 on a D.S. 5305?

Hans Vlems

[Kari Uusimäki]

Hans,

Why don't you buy a AS1200 CPU from e.g. Ebay and swap it? Then you have
an AS1200 with white cover. :)

Kari

[H Vlems]

On 15 okt, 11:39, Kari Uusimäki <uusim...@exdecWITHOUTTHISfinland.org>
wrote:

:-)
This is not a technical problem, rather a technical curiosity I'm
trying to figure out. The puzzle to solve is why VMS will boot on a
modified 5305 and why Tru64 fails.
Incidentlly, Tru64 installs fine on a Digital Server 3000, the white
box version of the Alpha Server 800.
I have one 1200 and four 5305 systems. One 5305 has been modified
exactly as you suggest, it has two 1200 cpu boards inside. As such it
probably better to describe it as a 1200 (with white skins) since
there's no component inside that is different from a 1200 that left
the factory in powder blue skins.
All five run the same firmware version, the latest available from HP,
i.e. 6.0-4.
Tru64 installs without a problem on the 1200 and on the modified
5305.
Adding two srm variables to nvram on the 5305's and VMS runs fine on
these systems.
On a 5305 Tru64 boots off the operating system cdrom. After the second
Infoserver V2.0 related message, the system prints a Panic message,
clears the screen and halts (or reboots if I forgot to set the reboot
variable to Halt). What I could read of it, the panic message was
about not finding swapspace.
So I installed 5.1A on a 1200 and put that disk in a 5305. Both
systems have the same SCSI controller, two cpu's each. The 1200 has
768 MB, the 5305 has 512 MB main memory, both systems have one disk
inside. BTW I use a serial console on all systems.
Booting the 5305 off the systemdisk built on the 1200 got me a '"panic
(0) no console found" error message.
AFAIK there's no difference between the 1200 and 5305 consoles, right?

Hans