Re: Entire RAID set non-reporting -- MIDRANGE-L

Neil,

>With your report that reseating the 6502 altered the symptoms, it does 
>sound like a hardware as opposed to PTF problem.

Unfortunately, it only did that once. :(  Then it went back to missing all eight
drives in the set.  But it does make me think it is more likely to be the 6502
then a combination of drives failing.  I have a 6502 being overnighted from a
dealer, so hopefully I'll be back up today and can install V4R5 across the
weekend.  In the meantime I can just dial into client's machines.

>I have to ask the obvious question - I guess this system has no hardware 
>maintenance contract ?

Correct.  I'm cheap. <g>  I bought the system in early '96 and set it up in my
house (I'm a one-man shop).  When testing the ESC link, I got a callback from a
CE who said he had never seen an AS/400 in a home before.  He probably still
hasn't, because I've never called for service and have never met the guy.  This
is the first real problem I've ever had.

Since downtime isn't as critical in a home operation, I had opted not to go for
hardware maintenance.  Parts tend to be real cheap these days on eBay, and
unless this turns out to be a software problem it was used parts which are
failing on me now.

Originally I had just 32MB memory and two 6606 drives.  I've run it up to 160MB
memory and ten 6606 drives, plus a second tape drive and LAN card.  Cheap.  I've
tried to keep a few spare 6606's on the shelf since they are notrious for
stiction, and a couple of the ones I bought developed stiction in the past.  But
I've never had more than one fail at a time in the past, which made it real easy
to swap out with my mirrored load source and RAID on the rest.  I normally run
it 24/7 except when I'm out of town -- but maybe I'll start leaving it powered
on then too to reduce chances of failure.

>a system would incorrectly require a system password after 
>it had been unpowered for a while. Still I presume yours was just powered 
>down, you didn't actually disconnect the power to the system.

It was only powered down, not disconnected.  Does that actually have anything to
do with it?  I could see the logic in doing it that way, but I never heard
before it was a factor.  I thought it was the time between a power down and
another IPL had to be under xx days to avoid a presumed change of ownership (and
therefore need for new OS license).

I appreciate all the help people have offered.  This list is great.

Doug
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