Installing a HP9000 735/125

HPRichard · Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 6:27 pm Post subject: Installing a HP9000 735/125

Hello,

after some years, I wanted to reactivate my old PA-RISC workstation which was already running Gentoo until the harddisk broke down.

I just startet to boot the machine with the 2008 hppa minimal CD but booting stops right after

HPRichard · Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 8:09 pm Post subject:

I just found the reason for this error.

As the machine was not switched on for several years, the RTC contained an invalid time code. Setting date and time in the boot admin console solved the boot problem. I will probably have to replace the battery on the I/O board for not having to configure the RTC at every powerup.

HPRichard · Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2012 8:59 am Post subject:

I got some steps further.

The next (small) problem was that the driver for the ethernet NIC is not autoloaded, I had to remember that the module is called lasi_82596 and to modprobe it.

After that I managed to do the basic installation, the firmware doesn't find the boot loader (PALO). Even when I instruct the system to boot from the harddisk directly, the firmware says it doesn't find a boot loader.

I fear that my 72GB SCA drive (I use a 50pin <-> SCA adapter for attaching it) is way too recent for my firmware (can only be upgraded by doing some soldering), so the next step will be to use some old 50pin drive for the PALO and the /boot/ partition.