Subject: Re: Newbie
To: Wayne Knowles <>
From: Collin Baillie <>
List: port-mipsco
Date: 11/04/2000 21:13:32
On Sun, 5 Nov 2000 12:43:22 +1300 (NZDT), Wayne Knowles wrote:

>  Hi Colin,
>  If you look at it from a probability perspective there is a higher
>  likelyhood that the disk will fail.  When we had a similar unit in
>  with around 8 x 1GB WREN disks we had miliple drive failures an never had
>  a SCSI controller failure over a 5 year period.
>  I would assume the unit would have shipped with a QIC-150 or QIC-120 tape
>  drive for performing the OS install.   You can perform a sprobe from the
>  monitor prompt to display the SCSI devices.  If you see the QIC-150 tape
>  drive (it has a vendor name of Archive Viper) then the SCSI controller is
>  alive - I would bet that is the case.

Allrighty. I've asked the club to draft a letter up to the collgge, so we
should (fingers crossed) soon be the proud owners of a piece of computer
history, and maybe we will even get to make some ourselves :) 

So, being the utter newbie that I am to mipsco computers and porting, 2

1. Does anyone have a list (however big or small) of commans I can use on
the machine when we get it to find out anything I can about its current
state? I've read there can be problems with the NVRAM on the thernet... is
this true? if there is a problem, how do I find it? How do I fix it?

2. What can I start reading in order to be some kind of use when the prot
begins? I'd really like to be part of the team that makes this mipsco port,
and I basically know very little about this kind of stuff.

Hopefully I can get back to you very soon with the news that the machine is


Collin Baillie
Collin Baillie      TreeMan on OzOrg IRC Network

Say Bye to Slow Internet!