Cube errors at startup

NeXT Computer, Inc. -> NeXT Black Hardware

Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: pentium on June 22, 2008, 08:09:23 PM
I have no idea weather this is a clue to why my scsi bus sis so fussy but whenever I attempt to boot from the main disk (sd 0,0,0) I get the following:

bad version 0xb80000fa
bad cksum
bad cksum
bad cksum
bad label
NeXT>

Now mind you I don't have anything on the drive and I have never used it in a NeXT system before so it might just be responding to an old System 7.1 installation that is on the drive.
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: un on June 22, 2008, 09:46:14 PM
The errors do rather suggest that it sees something there but doesn't know what it is. I would go ahead and install and see what happens after install has made a "real" partition.
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: neozeed on June 22, 2008, 09:47:38 PM
it screams bad sectors on the disk to me.... FWIW.
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: un on June 22, 2008, 10:04:42 PM
Wait, lets get this straight though, the disk wasn't partitioned right? 'cos you wouldn't expect it to do much with an disk that has an alien OS partition on it.
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: pentium on June 22, 2008, 10:43:38 PM
Yes, the disk has not yet been partitioned for NeXTStep (because I have no floppy drive to start the installer from).
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: Jenne on June 23, 2008, 12:52:37 AM
This -> might <- be caused by several other things, I've seen such lines on my Cube before, too.

1. check if all intenal cables are ok and re-seat them!
2. triple-check the kind of SCSI termination!
3. try to set the SCSI ID of the hard disk to "1" (and modify the boot command accordingly!)

These steps made it possible for me to use a hard disk that before was stated "unusable".

J

P.S.: I am wondering a bit on how You came up to these lines. As far as I know a "regular" Cube can not boot off the CD without a floppy drive. Or do You own a Cube that can do so?

P.P.S: You mentioned something about Mac OS 7.1. Question: is that hard disk one of these old Quantum Apple disks? If Yes: I never managed to get these working in my NeXT machines ;-)
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: neozeed on June 23, 2008, 04:06:16 AM
Quote from: "pentium"Yes, the disk has not yet been partitioned for NeXTStep (because I have no floppy drive to start the installer from).


Then how again did you expect it to work???
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: pentium on June 23, 2008, 01:03:31 PM
Quote from: "neozeed"
Quote from: "pentium"Yes, the disk has not yet been partitioned for NeXTStep (because I have no floppy drive to start the installer from).


Then how again did you expect it to work???
Uhhhhh, I'm just messing around in the ROM monitor for now until I can find something to boot off of and get this system working.
The drive itself is a 2Gb Seagate (I forget the model but it is mentioned in a different thread) and before it was in a mac it came in a server I bought at a local second hand store.

Quote1. check if all intenal cables are ok and re-seat them!
2. triple-check the kind of SCSI termination!
3. try to set the SCSI ID of the hard disk to "1" (and modify the boot command accordingly!)
1: They appear to be in good condition.
2: Termination should be good.
3: *groan* I have to tear the whole cube apart in order to reach the ID jumpers.

QuoteP.S.: I am wondering a bit on how You came up to these lines. As far as I know a "regular" Cube can not boot off the CD without a floppy drive. Or do You own a Cube that can do so?
I don't have a turbo cube and thus I can't directly boot off a cd drive (Unless very late revision non-turbo boards were different).
I want to get a floppy drive installed in the thing one day but I can't seem to find anyone who wants to part with their floppy bezel or floppy drive.
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: neozeed on June 23, 2008, 01:23:53 PM
google the story about the guy who DD'd a NS 3.3 CD onto a hard disk and booted his cube with it.

The other way out is the ben command to boot off the ethernet...

Google NetBSD on the cube, and you'll get the boot procedure.  I'm pretty sure you could cook up something to boot a mach kernel from it as well....
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: neozeed on June 23, 2008, 02:43:36 PM
I just verified if you follow any of the bootp/tftpboot/rarpd guides and have your cube boot the /NEXTSTEP_3.3/usr/standalone/boot.cdrom file it will then boot from the CD-ROM.

.. I kind of wish I'd realized that a while back as it'd have saved me some hell to get a SCSI floppy drive which I've since managed to lose.

Since Im using OpenBSD here is my configs...

#
shared-network LOCAL-NET {
       option  domain-name "my.domain";
       option  domain-name-servers 2.0.1.5;


      subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
              host nextcube {
              filename "boot";
              hardware ethernet 00:00:0f:00:82:d5;
              fixed-address 192.168.1.199;
              }
      }
}

/etc/dhcpd.conf

00:00:0f:00:82:d5       nextcube
/etc/ethers

192.168.1.199 nextcube
/etc/hosts

nextcube   root=sd1a\
               vm=auto

bootparams

Then just finally enable rarpd/tftpd/dhcpd

And snag the following files from the 3.3 CD:

lrwxr-xr-x  1 root    nobody       7 Jun 23 10:25 boot -> boot.cdrom
-rwxrwxrwx  1 nobody  nobody   49812 Oct 24  1994 boot-sd
-rwxrwxrwx  1 nobody  nobody   49812 Oct 24  1994 boot.cdrom
-rwxrwxrwx  1 nobody  nobody   49812 Oct 24  1994 diagnostics


having them placed into /tftpboot .. which you have to make mode 777 & owned by nobody...

Anyways it actually worked.  Bonus would be a fully "remote" workstation...  I bet then it'd let you shatter the whole 2g thing, but then on a 10mbit ethernet it'd be SLOW as hell.
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: pentium on June 23, 2008, 03:07:43 PM
Netbooting?
Oh god, not this again.
I honestly have no idea how to do this on Ubuntu. If you want me to netboot the system, someone will have to instruct me on what to do, step by step.
I spent three months just attempting to get my Personal Iris 4D/20 to netboot and I never managed to get it.
I'm also out of scsi drives big enought to dd the NS 3.3 install cd to.
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: Jenne on June 24, 2008, 12:24:57 AM
Quote from: "pentium"3: *groan* I have to tear the whole cube apart in order to reach the ID jumpers.

Well, I won´t tell You how often I had to dismantle my cube to get it working  :wink: But all these processes teached me a lot about that strange black machine and its non-standard behaviours...

J
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: pentium on June 24, 2008, 10:35:34 PM
It looks like the error is not limited to the scsi bus.
Look a third of the way down the page to see the same error. (http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1352&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15)
Sooooo this means that the cube is responding to garbage is on the drive (or in the case of that other thread, a badly written floppy) and that is why it is feeding me that error.
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: neozeed on June 25, 2008, 12:12:55 AM
Look kid, it's GIGO.


Garbage IN

Garbage OUT.

Until you feed it something good, you'll only get crap output.

Read up on the netbooting, it's really not that hard.
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: pentium on June 25, 2008, 01:26:27 AM
Quote from: "neozeed"Look kid, it's GIGO.


Garbage IN

Garbage OUT.

Until you feed it something good, you'll only get crap output.

Read up on the netbooting, it's really not that hard.
*puts down the crack pipe*

I still have a little knowledge on how to netboot something like IRIX (Using TFTP) but for something as different as NeXTStep I'm really reluctant to just go on google and try everything I can find.
Heck with it.
Next time a NeXT floppy drive comes up for sale I'm buying it.
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: neozeed on June 25, 2008, 12:03:29 PM
Quote from: "pentium"
I still have a little knowledge on how to netboot something like IRIX (Using TFTP) but for something as different as NeXTStep I'm really reluctant to just go on google and try everything I can find.
Heck with it.
Next time a NeXT floppy drive comes up for sale I'm buying it.

like bootp is that hard.  I mean I even posted the files I modified to boot mine.

try 'man bootpd'

'man rarpd'

man 'automatic doors'

it's really not that hard.
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: pentium on June 25, 2008, 04:22:05 PM
Quote from: "neozeed"
Quote from: "pentium"
I still have a little knowledge on how to netboot something like IRIX (Using TFTP) but for something as different as NeXTStep I'm really reluctant to just go on google and try everything I can find.
Heck with it.
Next time a NeXT floppy drive comes up for sale I'm buying it.

like bootp is that hard.  I mean I even posted the files I modified to boot mine.

try 'man bootpd'

'man rarpd'

man 'automatic doors'

it's really not that hard.
My skull is thicker than the crust of this planet.
Fine, I'll try to do a netboot when I came back from camp later this summer. I leave in two days.
In the meantime I'll try and see if I can get that floptical drive in my Indigo to work.
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: pentium on June 25, 2008, 08:12:43 PM
For the heck of it I took the drive out and plugged the TEAC floppy drive in (along with a little inline terminator which is needed when ther hard drive is not installed).
I put a disk in the floppy drive and turned the system on and after the usual startup tests I got this:

boot command sd 0,0,0
Booting SCSI target 6, LUN 0
READ: sdcmd bad state: 0
READ: sdcmd bad state: 0
READ: sdcmd bad state: 0
READ: sdcmd bad state: 0
Bad label
NeXT>

At the same time the front led on the floppy drive lit and I could hear it clicking away like it was attempting to read.

I also tried BFD and I got
boot fd(0,0,0)
fd: RECALIBRATE FAILED
No floppy disk drive
NeXT>


The image on the disk should be good.
Title: Cube errors at startup
Post by: pentium on June 25, 2008, 10:55:34 PM
AAAAAAARGH!!
I mis-jumpered the ID selector on the floppy drive and released the magic blue smoke! now I KNOW the drive is dead.

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