Hello,

I am relatively new to AIX world but coming from a linux background. I would appreciate any advice in this matter. Here it is: I have the 3 CDs (installation kit?) labeled

AIX V4.3.2
5765-C34
Volume x of 3

Using these CDs I am trying to set up a 7043-140 RS6000 workstation because the old drive has just died.
After entering the SMS using F1 at boot I have configured the boot order, I have checked that my system "sees" both the cd-rom and hard-disk drive and then I tried to boot using the first CD. I see the cd-rom blinking for a little bit and then the F05 shows up on the display and this is it, my installation stops here (if it ever started

Am I missing something? As far as I know, the installation CDs should be bootable and I only needed a floppy for AIX 3 am I right? Is there a way to check if those CDs are the right ones, if they are bootable or not? I don't have another RS6000 workstation to test these on. But I have tested the cd-rom drive and cables to make sure the're not at fault.

I have also tried the same thing using the AIX 5L for POWER V5.1 5765-E61 (5 CDs). No success though, same thing happened

Any help would be greately appreciated, thanks in advance!

James P.

Hi James,

It should work; the CDs are bootable. There may be a fault in the CD-rom drive. How did you test it? Sometimes they can work to read CDs but not to boot CDs.

Take a look at the manual here, especially pages 3-18, 3-19 and 3-20.

Other things to check :
- firmware level of the RS/6000
- firmware level of the CD drive (very rarely an issue, but I have seen it).
- media damage (unlikely if you've tried 5.1 CDs too, though).

Here is the microcode download page, including instructions on how to check the firmware/microcode levels and how to perform an upgrade. CD-ROM drives are under the "Other" section.

Thank you for your reply. I have tried the following so far: microcode firmware upgrade, replace the cd-rom, replace SCSI cable, using the 50-pin interface (instead of the HD68), I have downloaded the standalone bootable CD from IBM. I took out the hard drives as adivsed by IBM's documentation, the only SCSI device I have now in my system is the CD-ROM drive and the last thing I tried was to boot using the standalone diagnostic CD but the thing just won't boot.
I have not upgraded the cd-rom's firmware, but would you need an OS installation in order to do that? I don't have it at this point.

Did you try to connect a dumb terminal at the S1 (serial one) entry and look what happends on the screen at boot time?

I got it sorted out. It was a memory fault. I have took out 1 DIMM and everything magically worked. Thanks for your replies!

nice smart diagnostic, jamesps. I would never imagine that a memory fault could give such kind of behaviour during install.

Me neither, it was the last thing I had to do, to take the box apart and see what happens It finally works now but still got some more things to do.

james