Downgrading the Empireclassic HP3000

[tmj]

Earlier this week I had decided to downgrade the CPU of the HP Empireclassic host.  Our business had two old HP3000 957 CPUs, one was a model SX, the other was a model RX.

The SX was being used for Empire, and had lots of I/O bays, more than Empire needed.  The RX was being used as a test box for business applications was overloaded and only had four I/O bays.  (Two if using full height Fast and Wide SCSI boards.)

So we swapped the CPUs.  Not a problem.  But after moving the peripherals I had to remember (a.k.a. learn) how to set the Primary Boot Path in stable storage on both machines since they were different before the swap.

The SX had an old HP-IB card, and the Business Test CPU was on MPE/iX 6.5. so I remembered to pull that, so it would not have to be downgraded to 6.0.

Another thing I wanted to do was abandon the old HP 6000 disk enclosure  with it's four 2GB drives and substitute it with a relatively new Jamaica enclosure with four 4GB drives.

Of course this precipitated a Re-install from tape.  Not a problem really, I ran SYSGEN, changed the model ID of LDEV 1 and the other three drives on the same path, KEPT it, and created a boot tape.  I also made a Full Backup with the Directory option.  I was fortunate that I predefined LDEV to use the same I/O path.

Then I shut the machine down, swapped out the drives along the same I/O path, rebooted from tape and ran the Install command.

Well, one drive (LDEV 3) didn't have the exact same I/O path as the previous, but that didn't make a difference since I was bringing that drive up as a SCRATCH disk anyway.  I was paring down the MPEXL_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET drives from four disks to two.  Drives 3 and 4 were going to be SCRATCH spares.

EMPIRE and all the other games were on a different volume_set, already in a Jamaica enclosure and I was bringing that over as is.

The Install went well and good.  Then came time to restore from the backup.  So I used:

FILE T;DEV=7
RESTORE *T;/;DIRECTORY;KEEP;CREATE

This took care of most everything.  It recreated all the UserIDs, Passwords, Groups and Accounts, UIDs, GIDsthat matched the other volume_set.

For some reason I lost the COMMAND.PUB.SYS file, it wasn't on any of the backups.  Probably because it is accessed all the time.

Where to recover the old COMMAND.PUB.SYS file?  I did not relish having to build an empty file and retype every SETCATALOG I used to have in every account.

Fortunately, I still had the previous 6000 disk enclosure with the former operating/system.  So I shut down the system again re-plug the SCSI cable to the old drives and reboot.  The old system came up okay, sort of.  It said one of the drives wasn't there, the one with the different path (LDEV 3).

A LISTF of COMMAND.PUB.SYS still did not find it.

(OF course it *HAD* to have been on the old LDEV 3,  one fourth chance of THAT happening.)

So went back into sysgen, changed the path back for LDEV 3, kept and rebooted again.

Success!  I found my old COMMAND.PUB.SYS file.

I stored it to tape, shut down, swapped the drives again and rebooted.

Having the presence of mind in case I need another file, I changed the dip switches, reconfigured LDEV 3 and made it the same path as the old LDEV 3 this time.  Saved it in SYSGEN and rebooted again.

When it came up, I restored my precious COMMAND.PUB.SYS file. (I also copied it to COMMOLD.PUB.SYS, so it would get stored during the daily backup.)

Finally the Empire machine was back in running condition!  It is still on MPE/iX 6.0 because of the old HP-IB card, but now that it is gone I can upgrade the O/S to 6.5.

The Business Test CPU had it's own problems.  Notably forgetting the Differential F/W SCSI drives needed F/W SCSI boards.  But that was minor issue.  It is a SX box and there is plenty of room for boards.