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A/UX hangs after upgrade to 3.1?

Xunil

New member
My pet project lately has been getting A/UX going on an SE/30. This project went fine - I even succeeded in installing 3.0.1 off of an unsupported DVD-ROM - until I tried to upgrade to 3.1.

The upgrade installed fine, but when the system rebooted to boot into 3.1 for the first time I got "panic: ialloc: dup alloc". A little FAQ investigation showed that the filesystem was dirty despite being marked clean, so I took the recommended course of fsck -y /dev/default and attempting to boot. No more "dup alloc" complaint, but nothing else, either. It just hangs at the gray screen after A/UX startup disappears (presumably this is the handoff to A/UX itself from the initial System 7.0.1 boot).

My SE/30 has 128MB of RAM installed (brand new); a 2GB drive of unknown provenance, but which has always worked until now; and an Asante MacCon, the SE/30 model, with 10bT, AUI and 10b2 connectors.

Has anyone seen problems like this before?

Also, as a side note: The FAQ says that 3.1.1 can't be run reliably on the SE/30 (among other MacII-based models), but it doesn't elaborate beyond that. Can anyone explain why the SE/30 can't run 3.1.1?

Thanks. :b&w:

 

porter

Well-known member
I would start with 3.0.1 and get some confidence in the system first.

Does the SE/30 power down completely, or just stop with a screen saying it's safe to switch off?

My 3.2Gig quantum fireball was getting corrupted because the machine was powering off before the queued writes were complete, I switched to a smaller older drive and the problem stopped.

So it *may* be the drive.

 

Xunil

New member
I would start with 3.0.1 and get some confidence in the system first.
This machine ran 3.0.1 fine for two weeks before I tried the 3.1 upgrade, so I know the system works.

Does the SE/30 power down completely, or just stop with a screen saying it's safe to switch off?
I don't know, I've only ever done reboots. I suspect it would just put up a "safe to turn off" screen.

My 3.2Gig quantum fireball was getting corrupted because the machine was powering off before the queued writes were complete, I switched to a smaller older drive and the problem stopped.
So it *may* be the drive.
I suppose it's possible something like that happened. I'll try a fresh install this weekend.

 

caryn

Member
Your problem is almost certainly your hardware, either your machine itself, or your RAM. Firstly, A/UX 3.1 will not run on the SE/30, although the Official Line was that A/UX 3.1 was "unsupported: and 3.1.1 was not "recommended" for the SE/30 (and II/IIx/IIcx) due to "unreliability". Personally, I've never seen it run; I did see it boot a couple of times (out of several attempts), but I've never seen it run on any of those machines stock (if you swap out the CPU on the motherboard with the IIcx---including the ROMs, it supposedly runs, though I've not seen such a machine).

Secondly, RAM. A/UX 3.1 is **extremely** picky about RAM. I have three IIfx boxes I run A/UX 3.1.1 on, and they all have 64MB of RAM in 4x 16MB 'Ubig' 64-pin SIMMs. And these SIMMs are a problem during the upgrade process (mine actually pull up the DEAD MAC face and the Evil Tones of Death).

When moving from one "large" disk to another (250/500MB, then 500MB-1GB, then 1GB to 2GB, etc...), the best course is to reinstall A/UX. With the full legal release of A/UX 3.1.1, this means installing A/UX 3.0.1 via CD, then upgrading to A/UX 3.1 via the Upgrade CD (this also installs the "Tune-Up I" stuff for 3.0.1), then upgrading to A/UX 3.1.1 via Tune-Up II. So I have done this quite a few times, in addition to having done it "professionally" back in 1994-1996.

The problem comes between installing the 3.1 upgrade CD and getting to the Tune-Up II floppy (3.1 to 3.1.1, more or less). The machine dies as noted above. The fix, in my case, is to pull the 'Ubig' SIMMs and install all 4MB SIMMs (well, one box has 4x 8MB and 4x 4MB, but they are all "Apple certified" SIMMs). The boxes then boot fine. I install the 3.1.1 update via the floppy, reboot, and then shutdown. I then re-install the 'Ubig' SIMMs and re-arrange the other SIMMs (the Ubig SIMMs are 70ns, so all the 4MB SIMMs must be 70ns, but I'm a bit short so one box has to have 4x 1MB SIMMs with its 4x 16MB SIMMs). Re-assemble the IIfx, and boot.

Life is Good.

So...if you believe in your heart that your SE/30 is different and will really, really, run A/UX 3.1.1, you might attempt to track down your SIMM config and check their speed and config (some SIMMs cheated their way to 64-pins with PALs, as the older IIx SIMMs did to go over 4MB, these will not work, so far as I know).

Otherwise, find a IIci, Q700, etc... and go for that. Mind you, many shops want ridiculous money for them, and will simply scrap them instead of selling them for the $50 which is generous (I got my IIfxs for free, and paid $25 for my Q950, but nowadays folks want to call them "collector's" items).

If you've solved the problem, please do let me know, so I can enshrine your solution in the FAQ.

caryn

 

caryn

Member
The basis for the FAQ I have is JAG's multi-part A/UX FAQ, which one can still find here and there, but mine includes additional info available since then. I believe one can find the base JAG FAQ on Penelope, as well as other hints and tricks:

http://www.aux-penelope.com/downloads.htm

I maintain a version too, though mine doesn't sit on the Internet at the moment, as my computer room is in disarray and I then have to battle Incredible Ignorance with the ISP to get DNS sorted (one has to get past the "we don't support that" and "the DNS Settings for your computer are..."---of course they mean DOS BOX when they use "computer"---one cannot delegate the ISP's arpa range for them...).

Penelope and here seem like good places to go for answers, but I certainly encourage you to download a copy of JAG's FAQ, even if it is the "frozen" version of 8-odd years ago---it always helps to have a place to start.

Also...does this mean your SE/30 is running A/UX 3.1.1???

caryn

 

rabindranath72

Well-known member
Thread necromancy.

A/UX 3.1.1 runs perfectly on the Macintosh SE/30. Mine has 16Mb and 250Mb hard disk. What I have found is that there are different file versions of the 3.1 upgrade, some of them are corrupted and can give the problems reported by the OP (I experienced them once.) In particular, the version distributed with the Apple Legacy software CD seems to be broken.

 
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