Re: Gain login access to old CISC AS/400e

Hello Conrad,

Am 24.03.2020 um 19:57 schrieb Conrad Kostecki <ck+midrangel@xxxxxxxxxxx>:

Q1: Did you see any IPL status messages from IPL on the screen before the signon display appeared?

I am not sure, there were a lot of codes, which were shown? Or what do you specific mean?

Nothing specific. If there are IPL messages, the terminal is basically working as console.

I did now did a full shutdown and pulled the plug.
After plugged the plug in back, the SRC showed 0000BBBB and shortly after that SRC 00003333.

Huh? Never seen threes like you described.

As suggested, I pushed the button "Mode" multiple times, until light was at manual and pushed the white button to start manual IPL.

After some time, the SRC A6005004 shows up and stayed.

Huh?

From https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/POWER6/iphbx/troublesrccodes.htm:
A6005004
A console device was not found when the server was started. A twinaxial controller was found but cannot be used. This indicates only the presence of a controller. It does not indicate that the controller can be defective.

The IBM 3488 showed a connection, but no output. Seems to stay forever. At this stage, if I press option 21, SRC A6005004 disappeared and shows instead 01 B. Also at this moment, I am getting output on my console and a menu of 4 options is being shown. Mainly option 1) with start IPL and option 3) start DST. See https://imgur.com/VjdKCco for image.

Hooray! Whatever caused this mishap, apparently your 21 fixed it.

That's odd about A6005004. I can't remember, that I had yesterday that SRC. Seems to have trouble with finding the console?

We need to see how the system behaves when it's in a determined state.

After that, I did now choose option 3) for DST, reset the password and return to that main menu. Did the same in DST, as in my first post described. Afterwards I choosed option 1) to start/continue IPL. During that IPL, I could see some sort of status on the console, that the IPL is doing.

But not all the time. In a normal IPL, I don't have any output on my console until the login screen shows up!

That's weird, but maybe that's normal for such an old OS and system. With V4, you have status messages also in a normal IPL.

When the manual IPL did complete, my login screen appeared. But SRC Code A9002000 was shown up. But a login with QSECOFR/QSECOFR (Yes, typed both with shift upper case) was not possible. I got again the CPF1394 error during login.

I also have a box showing A9002000, but it's working perfectly. I was too lazy to connect a terminal to force console device and controller descriptions to be rebuilt. ;-)

I have no idea why you still can't login, though. Strange.

:wq! PoC

PGP-Key: DDD3 4ABF 6413 38DE - https://www.pocnet.net/poc-key.asc