Hardware Release Notes
6.12 DIGITAL Modular Computing Components (DMCC)
• If you are running Windows NT on these systems, update only the AlphaBIOS
setup.
If you accidentally update both the SRM and the AlphaBIOS consoles, you will
enter the AlphaBIOS Setup menu, and you will not have the option to return to
the SRM console. The only way to exit the AlphaBIOS Setup menu and return
to the SRM console is to use a Firmware Update Utility located at the following
Internet site:
ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/Alpha/firmware/index.html
6.13 Digital Personal Workstation: Booting OpenVMS V7.3-1 and
Higher
V7.3-1
If you are using the Digital Personal Workstation 433au, 500au, and 600au series
systems, you can boot OpenVMS Version 7.3-1 or higher from an IDE CD if the
controller chip is a Cypress PCI Peripheral Controller. You cannot boot OpenVMS
on a Digital Personal Workstation au series system from an IDE CD with an Intel
Saturn I/O (SIO) 82378 chip in your configuration. You must use a SCSI CD, if
the Intel SIO chip is present.
To determine which IDE chip you have in your configuration, enter the following
SRM console command:
SHOW CONFIGURATION
If you see Cypress PCI Peripheral Controller, you can boot OpenVMS.
If you see Intel SIO 82378, you will need to use and boot from a SCSI CD.
6.14 Dual-Controller HSGnn with Many LUNs Can Fail Under Heavy
I/O Load
V7.3-2
A combination of improvements in driver performance and faster systems has
uncovered a limit to the amount of I/O that a dual-controller HSGnn storage
array configured with a relatively large number of LUNs can handle. When this
limit is reached, it is possible for the array to be kept so busy processing I/O that
it is unable to complete the normal periodic synchronization between controllers,
causing a controller hang or failure and a loss of host access to some or all LUNs
until a manual controller reset is performed. In the case of such a controller
failure, the Last Failure Codes most likely to be reported on the HSG console are
01960186, 01942088, and 018600A0.
Most HSGnn devices will continue to run with no problems. If your site
experiences an HSG controller hang or failure when a heavy load is applied and
the HSG has more than approximately 24 LUNs configured, you may be able to
avoid future hangs or failures by reconfiguring the controller with fewer LUNs or
distributing I/O so that the HSG is not so heavily loaded.
This issue is being investigated by the appropriate HP engineering groups.
6–14 Hardware Release Notes
