I acquired a used 8203-E8A POWER6 box for super cheap on the ‘Bay, and now
I’m learning how to get it up and running. It didn’t come with disks, but I
have a pair of 139GB 15K SAS Hard Drive (42R6691) arriving today. The
machine was sold as ‘Untested’ but at the price I got it for; I was willing
to take a chance on it.
It’s been slow going but here is how my progress has gone thus far:
First problem I had is that the box would not power up all the way with all
4 CPU cards installed (SRC 11002613), so I removed cards 2 & 3 and the box
would boot with 110V. Then I set off to access the ASMI. Luckily, the
documents are quite helpful in this case, but I didn’t understand the
example table at first and was trying to set my laptop to the same IP as
the HMC port… Once I tried a different IP in the same range it worked fine.
Then, I was able to log into the ASMI using the default values, and then
set the HMC2 port to an IP address on my LAN (192.168.x.x). I left the HMC1
configuration as-is. I don’t know that this box was previously configured
with and HMC, but the panel does show HMC=0 when on option 01. The HMC2
port shows up on my router listing as the port I set, but I don’t ever see
any of the other ports being assigned IPs when I plug a patch cable in.
However, I do see LED activity when I plug in a cable.
Secondly, I have yet to connect the Operations Console… I have read several
threads here and a few documents in the knowledge base regarding this and
it hasn’t been helpful. These articles mention items and operations that I
cannot access...
I have not seen the “searching for console” SRC codes nor the “no console
found” ones even once during IPLs. All the codes I see seem to be C codes,
no A codes are visible in the ASMI’s Boot Progress History List. I’ve tried
a direct connection to the machine at T1 with static IPs on both sides,
firewalls off, and AV off as well and the Operations Console just sits at
‘Connecting…’ forever. I've been referencing this article:
https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=nas8N1018663
I get to Step 7 and never see the 'Pending Auth' come up, but I'm really
not sure I have the console configured correctly.
I’ve also tried looking for the 65+21 options, and they are never
available. Reference here:
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_i5_54/rzajr/rzajrfunctions6521.htm
I’ve done the 25 & 26 bit to enable the higher options, but 64 is the
highest option in most cases. I’ve tried A, B, C, and D modes and I just
don’t see the 65 or 21 options. I’ve come across a few threads that point
to this operation to reset the console type, but I can’t seem to activate
it. The above article does mention that "To use these functions, the system
must be far enough through the IPL for the code to run properly." I'm not
sure I am far enough along to do so...
I have the I_BASE_01 for 7.1 that I am trying to D mode IPL from but the
system hasn’t had any disks in it. I feel like I should still be able to
get into DST, am I incorrect there?
I’m going to try again this evening since I’ll have the hard disks, but I’m
wondering if I’m missing anything.
TL;DR: How to connect Ops Console on bare metal box with no drives using
7.1 I_BASE_01 disc.
Thanks in advance.
P.S. Sorry for the novella...
midrange.com
