Well my 040 cube arrived today and i need some help!
this is probably really simple people, sorry to bother.
But anyway when i turn it on it says
Testing Hardware
Then it goes into the "NeXT Rom Monitor 2.5 (v66)"
and it just sits there saying
CPU MC68040 25mhz, memory 100 ns
Backplane slot #0
Ethernet Address:
Memory size 24MB
Testing the FPU, SCC, SCSI, Enet, ECC, RTC, Timer, Event Counter, Sound out
I have a feeling it's something really, really simple but this is my first piece of black hardware so I have no clue what to do. Please help!
Hmm.
Have you tried unplugging all the internal hardware?
Also sounds like something a dead MO drive would do.
actually the dead mo drive was the first thing to go (someone should do a poll on how many there are, lol) but that didn't do anything. So after an hour of fiddiling and moving things about i tried starting it without the little battery for the clock (assuming that would reset somthing). And it did. So now i'm at the "loading from network" screen. I'm assuming (again) that i need a working harddrive or CD drive to get things moving, or loading from disk. (the hardrive dosen't work, i think)
Seem like SCSI has hung the machine. Does it have an HD installed, if so is it terminated and configured OK?. Does the machine have an OS loaded.
Have you hit ctrl-c?
yes the scsi disk is terminated and configured to id 0. I have booted the cube even without the disk connected, but it always equals the same outcome. I don't think that there is a OS loaded, there could be.
Also it seems that key combinations are doing nothing.
What do you mean the hard drive does not work?
Is it spinning up?
Is it going "tic tic tic"?
is is spinning up and then doing nothing?
i have been doing some checking and i found that the drive is working. I attached it to my win box and the scsi card recognizes it. Also windows sees the 1gb drive.
But i still can't get the cube into the monitor again. It's just stuck at "Booting from network".
It seems that the only working button is the power button.
Well I have never seen what a cube does when it boots so I don't know if the netboot is because it can't find anything to boot off of or because it has been told that it should boot off the network by default.
I sent you a pm.
Hmm....
Sounds like the boot parameters are doing some sort of "loop" testing. First of all You should try to get back into the ROM monitor. Immediatly after powering the cube on keep on pressing and holding "Command" and "Tilde" (picture of keys can be seen here:
http://www.blackmac.ch/nextstation/pages/software.html) until the ROM monitor pops up instead of that network boot thing (which seems to be some sort of standard boot configuration for black hardware from the times where harddisks still were quite expnsive). Then try to halt all boot processes by hitting "?" or "p". Maybe You'll get a list of help topics or boot parameters (one of those mentions something with "loop" somewhere). As long as the ROM monitor should pop up I think nearly everything seems to be OK on the hardware side, just some boot misconfiguration I suppose. In case the ROM monitor doesn't pop up it can have many reasons: pressed caps lock key, misfunctioning RAM module, empty PRAM battery (this one caused lots of troubles for me once)... What exact type of harddisk is it You are using?
J
command tilde
hit that while it's booting from the network, and youll get the rom monitor.
BSD (enter)
will boot from a scsi disk
BEN (enter)
will boot from the ethernet
? (enter)
will give you all kinds of fun options....
If you don't have an already booting disk, you can get a CD of 3.3, but the cubes cannot boot from the CDROM's directly, they need a floppy disk, which finding scsi floppies is damed near impossible.
If you have access to more than 1 scsi disk, and a linux or bsd box you can 'dd' the cd onto a disk, and boot from that.
Try the BSD you may be in luck.
the 040 will support a floppy drive. a scsi floppy drive is not needed. the 040 cube will boot from a cd provided the cube is a turbo 33 mhz and has the correct rom.
nextime
Quote from: "nextime"the 040 will support a floppy drive. a scsi floppy drive is not needed. the 040 cube will boot from a cd provided the cube is a turbo 33 mhz and has the correct rom.
nextime
It was said in the original post that it was a 25 MHz non-Turbo 040 Cube, therefore it does not have the correct ROM version and needs a floppy to boot the install disc.
Eric
Would the Scsi floptical drive from an Indigo work?
"It seems that the only working button is the power button."
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Make sure that all the cable pins are straight and accounted for, and that they are all plugged in securely - in the correct place.
You also may have a bad keyboard. Just because the power button works - doesn't always mean the rest of the keyboard does. I have seen a few bad ones.
First of all, the only button that works is the power button. I have tried every key combonation to get into the rom monitor, but no go. When i turn it on the shift keys flash after the hardware test. Even if i hold the command and ~ key while turing the cube on nothing happens. The harddisk i'm using is a Conner CFP 1080, it is 1gb.
Now the floppy and it's drive, would a regular 1.44mb (not 2.88 or whatever) drive work? Also would the same boot disks used for a x86 install work also?
As for the keyboard i opened it up and nothing really strikes me as odd (for black hardware).
As for the ram, i will go over them.
the ram seems to be fine along with the pram battery
on a side note i found a chip for the DSP slot.
What?
Your cube has a DSP SIMM installed?! :shock:
No, the intel boot floppy and the Motorola boot floppy are two COMPLETELY different floppies. Since it is also just a regilar 1.44Mb floppy I think a regular 1.44Mb floppy drive might work but don't trust my word on that. Just go to that computer shop you told me about and see if you can pick up a floppy drive from one of the indigos. It might work.
ya, after some time of rummiging thruough my parts i found a stick for the DSP slot. I have no idea how big it is. but hey, it beats nothing.
i tried connecting a regular floppy and used the moto boot disk found here. The light for the floppy comes on, but the cube won't boot from it.
One thing, I picked up a external scsi CD drive. It is a Ricoh MP8040SE, but i'm not sure if it is compatible with the cube.
Quoteya, after some time of rummiging thruough my parts i found a stick for the DSP slot.
:shock:
Erm, the DSP upgrade did not have the same pinout of regular ram. If you are lucky you have not fried anything so take it out.
Quotei tried connecting a regular floppy and used the moto boot disk found here. The light for the floppy comes on, but the cube won't boot from it.
How exactly does it hook up to the cube?
cubes need scsi floppy disks to boot 3.3...
dd a 3.3 cdrom onto a scsi disk, and boot that...
Quote from: "neozeed"cubes need scsi floppy disks to boot 3.3...
dd a 3.3 cdrom onto a scsi disk, and boot that...
neozeed
What blocksize should one specify when trying to do this? 512, 2048, or something else?
Thanks
There goes the DSP chip.
The floppy conectes to the mainboard through the regular floppy ribbon cable. There is a space for it on the mother board.
for the dd option, i have no idea how to do this. could someone expand please?
I would try unspecified at first....
CDroms are 2k blocks IIRC, but try this first:
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/myscsidisk
it should be about as simple as that........
but you can try bs=512 ..... the other thing you could try is dd'ing the boot floppy on the hard disk... it just contains a 'boot' program that can read 2k block devices (cdroms)
m'kay, i'll try this with the ubuntu desktop cd and a second cd drive.
Quote from: "neozeed"I would try unspecified at first....
CDroms are 2k blocks IIRC, but try this first:
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/myscsidisk
it should be about as simple as that........
but you can try bs=512 ..... the other thing you could try is dd'ing the boot floppy on the hard disk... it just contains a 'boot' program that can read 2k block devices (cdroms)
Thanks for the info, as I was unsure if the bs value was required, and what to set it to. I had tried this before using a 1G Jaz drive as the target without success, but will try again with a small HD instead. It is a bit confusing, at least for me, since the cd does have a 2048byte sector size, but the cdrom must support 512byte reads. That is unless I am mixing my NeXT/Sun/SGI/HP stuff again as it has all become a jumbled mess as I get older. :(
Quote from: "nextchef"Quote from: "neozeed"I would try unspecified at first....
CDroms are 2k blocks IIRC, but try this first:
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/myscsidisk
it should be about as simple as that........
but you can try bs=512 ..... the other thing you could try is dd'ing the boot floppy on the hard disk... it just contains a 'boot' program that can read 2k block devices (cdroms)
Thanks for the info, as I was unsure if the bs value was required, and what to set it to. I had tried this before using a 1G Jaz drive as the target without success, but will try again with a small HD instead. It is a bit confusing, at least for me, since the cd does have a 2048byte sector size, but the cdrom must support 512byte reads. That is unless I am mixing my NeXT/Sun/SGI/HP stuff again as it has all become a jumbled mess as I get older. :(
I wish I could remember where I saw it, I think it may have been here but someone reported sucess in DD'ing a CD ont a hard disk, and booting it..
But then if that doesnt work floppies and hard disks have the same block size, so that'll work too.