I hadn't started this DEC Alpha 3000-300 since last summer, and booted
it up so I could load the new PAK's the other day.
The result was that it completes almost the entire OpenVMS startup, but
then crashes with the following:
%SET-I-INTSET, login interactive limit = 64, current interactive value = 0
**** OpenVMS Alpha Operating System V8.4 - BUGCHECK ****
** Bugcheck code = 000001CC: INVEXCEPTN, Exception while above ASTDEL
** Crash CPU: 00000000 Primary CPU: 00000000 Node Name: A300
** Highest CPU number: 00000000
** Active CPUs: 00000000.00000001
** Current Process: DECW$STARTUP
** Current PSB ID: 00000001
** Image Name: A300$DKA0:[SYS0.SYSCOMMON.][SYSEXE]DECW$CONFIG.EXE;1
**** Starting selective memory dump at 8-NOV-2018 21:57...
The disk is a SCSI2SD board with an 8 GB SD card. It had been running
just fine, until now.
Does this crash point to a hardware or software problem?
I think "Exception while above ASTDEL" refers to an exception encountered
while processing an interrupt in kernel mode, probably in device driver code.
I think this leans more in the direction of a sofware problem while something
like "Machine check in kernel mode" would lean more in the direction of a
hardware problem.
Having said that, I think a software problem is very unlikely unless you
were running a bleeding edge version of VMS on bleeding edge hardware or
performing some highly unusual operation, not just booting a well proven
version of VMS on a mature system which worked perfectly well before this.
If the copy of VMS on your emulated disk got damaged, I think it would be
unusual to get almost all the way through the boot procedure and then fail
right at the end, although I suppose very slight damage only to a DECWindows
specific device driver might somehow manage to cause this.
Bizarrely, I have had a faulty mouse suddenly cause all sorts of strange
issues on a DEC 3000-300. It might be worth trying it without the mouse
plugged in.
Regards,
Peter Coghlan.
