IBM RS6000 model 370 type 7012

[jc179]

I am not familiar with that format

I know many people are using something called a greaseweasle for odd formats though and are having success. Neat little device that connects to a modern PC over USB.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to get mine work, but I think its an error between the chair and keyboard.

I am not sure which version of AIX mine came from. They are factory labeled by IBM for the 7012 line of RS6000s. I didn't personally make them.

I've yet to pickup a greaseweasle, but do intend to one day, for now just using the old hardware, which is probably the root cause of the issues here for me.

Jonathan

 

[jc179]

the diagnostic disks are standard pc style format. double sided, 18x 512b, 500k data rate (1440kb). if you ran out of space you were not writing them correctly. you don't need a flux imager for this project.

This is good to know, must be something up with the hardware somewhere, will keep digging on... All I can do is insert a disk, and press enter, the smit diag util and umkdskt are doing all the complicated stuffs : ) .

Good to know I don't need a flux imager heh, maybe a known good working fdd drive would be a good start for me.

Perhaps time to buy one of those adapters ....

Jonathan

 

[jc179]

In some sheer stroke of luck, I managed to get the disks made, somehow I was able to get the original FDD going, cleaned ribbon cable, replaced a few caps on the interface board, washed the board.. Needed to mkfs my /tmp VG, suspect maybe something was corrupted, bad block, who knows. It worked. Reading the disks was a whole different story, had to write a few versions of each disk, and try different drives to get a clean read without retry/errors. I really wanted to use the same FDD drive I created the disks in, in my PS2, however, anytime I went to use ImageDisk it would lock up when trying to read the disk, viewing the readme file indicated that PS2 systems use an older WD FDD chip, and slowing down the fdd rpm may help with that... a screwww that! Not touching that drive with anything but a disk again, even looking at it funny, it will probably crap out.

Here is a link to the images, hopefully someone finds them useful one day

IBM RS 6000 7012 DIAGNOSTIC DISKS : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

IBM RS 6000 7012 DIAGNOSTIC DISKSNotes:-Disks imaged with ImageDisk 1.20 from a IBM RS6000 7012-370.-Used smit -> DISKETTE SERVICE AID 802120-Machine...

archive.org

Ah good, got a few projects crossed off in one go, that never happens.

Jonathan

 

[kokoboi]

You can attach a SCSI CDROM and boot the diag CD, it will ask you to identify the console (serial1 or gfx) once it is loaded.

 

[jc179]

You can attach a SCSI CDROM and boot the diag CD, it will ask you to identify the console (serial1 or gfx) once it is loaded.

This is what I ended up doing, at the time I didn't have a bootable CD, found one a while ago and its up and going..

thanks

 

[Schafeman]

Ah that's pretty neat then. I don't think I will be doing any instruction asm coding on these, just tinkering about really.

I have a RS6K model 250 here as well, seems to me its speed is about the same, from the same era, and has what you'd typically expect to find one big chip with a heatsink, or so far as I can tell. Too bad its power supply quit... : / I was going to borrow its video card, but it is some special interface (not MCA, but sort of using a riser plugin to the mainboard).

Jonathan

Hey JC179.. still have that model 250? I have the 230 and I've been searching high and low for the video card out of one of these pizzabox machines. Mine works and needs video, let me know if you'd be willing to sell (just the video card).

 

[jc179]

Hey JC179.. still have that model 250? I have the 230 and I've been searching high and low for the video card out of one of these pizzabox machines. Mine works and needs video, let me know if you'd be willing to sell (just the video card).

Will send you a PM