I need to coldload a K2000 (Yes, 30ish years old) system. Does anyone have a manual or procedure how to do it?

Thanks,
Dave

That’s a blast from the past! If you locked me in a room with one, I’m sure I could figure it out. I’m less sure that I can pull out of the back of my brain without seeing one. Wasn’t that one of the systems that used a CLX style Service Processor? If so, there was a small panel on the front of the main cabinet with an LCD display and 3 buttons. You would use the buttons to navigate through the configuration and boot menus. You would set the boot configuration and then initiate the boot. The panel had a small button battery in it. Don’t do anything until you replace that battery. In those days, the manuals used to be distributed on CD disks. I may have one of those CDs buried at the bottom of a box, at the bottom of a stack of boxes, at the bottom of my garage. If I get a chance, I’ll go digging for it.

Jon Marcus

On Thursday, May 20, 2021 at 3:06:29 p.m. UTC-4, j-ma...@pacbell.net wrote:
> That’s a blast from the past! If you locked me in a room with one, I’m sure I could figure it out. I’m less sure that I can pull out of the back of my brain without seeing one. Wasn’t that one of the systems that used a CLX style Service Processor? If so, there was a small panel on the front of the main cabinet with an LCD display and 3 buttons. You would use the buttons to navigate through the configuration and boot menus. You would set the boot configuration and then initiate the boot.. The panel had a small button battery in it. Don’t do anything until you replace that battery. In those days, the manuals used to be distributed on CD disks. I may have one of those CDs buried at the bottom of a box, at the bottom of a stack of boxes, at the bottom of my garage. If I get a chance, I’ll go digging for it.
>
> Jon Marcus

Don't you have to go to an RMI or something and scroll down and hit start system or something like that? Or am I thinking about the prior box?

RB

On Fri, 21 May 2021 13:14:06 -0700 (PDT), Randall <rsbecker@nexbridge.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, May 20, 2021 at 3:06:29 p.m. UTC-4, j-ma...@pacbell.net wrote:
>> That’s a blast from the past! If you locked me in a room with one, I’m sure I could figure it out. I’m less sure that I can pull out of the back of my brain without seeing one. Wasn’t that one of the systems that used a CLX style Service Processor? If so, there was a small panel on the front of the main cabinet with an LCD display and 3 buttons. You would use the buttons to navigate through the configuration and boot menus. You would set the boot configuration and then initiate the boot. The panel had a small button battery in it. Don’t do anything until you replace that battery. In those days, the manuals used to be distributed on CD disks. I may have one of those CDs buried at the bottom of a box, at the bottom of a stack of boxes, at the bottom of my garage. If I get a chance, I’ll go digging for it.
>>
>> Jon Marcus
>
>Don't you have to go to an RMI or something and scroll down and hit start system or something like that? Or am I thinking about the prior box?
>
>RB

CLX and K1 and K2 series used a small control panel in the first (or only) system cabinet. It had a small 2-line character LCD display, and 3 buttons...
Scroll down, Cancel and Select if I recall, to navigate the functions. There was usually a small helper book attached.

Usually, the panel would load the last SYSNN fairly easily. And somewhere there would be an RS232 (or Current Loop) connection to a 6530.

But j-ma is correct, if it's been sitting around it's probably best to replace the battery first.

On Tuesday, May 18, 2021 at 8:24:25 AM UTC-4, dave....@westbrook.church wrote:
> I need to coldload a K2000 (Yes, 30ish years old) system. Does anyone have a manual or procedure how to do it?
>
> Thanks,
> Dave

Reach to Partners Remarketing or Castle Systems Inc... They can sure give you some information or documents.

gc

On Friday, May 21, 2021 at 5:16:31 p.m. UTC-4, Bill Honaker wrote:
> On Fri, 21 May 2021 13:14:06 -0700 (PDT), Randall <rsbe...@nexbridge.com> wrote:
>
> >On Thursday, May 20, 2021 at 3:06:29 p.m. UTC-4, j-ma...@pacbell.net wrote:
> >> That’s a blast from the past! If you locked me in a room with one, I’m sure I could figure it out. I’m less sure that I can pull out of the back of my brain without seeing one. Wasn’t that one of the systems that used a CLX style Service Processor? If so, there was a small panel on the front of the main cabinet with an LCD display and 3 buttons. You would use the buttons to navigate through the configuration and boot menus. You would set the boot configuration and then initiate the boot. The panel had a small button battery in it. Don’t do anything until you replace that battery. In those days, the manuals used to be distributed on CD disks. I may have one of those CDs buried at the bottom of a box, at the bottom of a stack of boxes, at the bottom of my garage. If I get a chance, I’ll go digging for it.
> >>
> >> Jon Marcus
> >
> >Don't you have to go to an RMI or something and scroll down and hit start system or something like that? Or am I thinking about the prior box?
> >
> >RB
> CLX and K1 and K2 series used a small control panel in the first (or only) system cabinet. It had a small 2-line character LCD display, and 3 buttons...
> Scroll down, Cancel and Select if I recall, to navigate the functions. There was usually a small helper book attached.
>
> Usually, the panel would load the last SYSNN fairly easily. And somewhere there would be an RS232 (or Current Loop) connection to a 6530.
>
> But j-ma is correct, if it's been sitting around it's probably best to replace the battery first.

The two line LCD display *was* called the RMI in those days (checking my old notes). There is an independent battery for that device AFAIK to keep power to the configuration, although I think critical things were burnt into an EPROM. When you scroll down, one of the options should be "Start System". I think the panel was independent of the main power supply but I'm not sure - hence the battery. I don't recall ever having to replace one - although that was a long time ago. If there's no response on the panel, I don't think you can start the system.

Randell, I think we are remembering the same thing, but using different words to describe it. Using the 3 buttons, you would key in things like the boot disc controller address, the boot device, and the SYSnn. Having done that, you would then select Start System. The next time you boot the system, it would remember the boot parameters you used for the last boot.

I have a funny story about the button battery. One of the things it did was to maintain a real time clock and save the time while the system was off. When you cold load the system, NSK would read the clock and set the system time. Previous generations of systems didn’t have this. The first thing you had to do after a cold load was to use the SETTIME command to set the system time. The command required an obscure combination of numbers, colons, and commas. If you enter it wrong, you would get a variety of error messages, none of which included the correct syntax. If you didn’t cold systems on a daily basis you would always have to look up the command to get it right.

I was once setting up a CLX for a trade show in Phoenix one Saturday night in September. The hotel wouldn’t let us have access to the ball room until Midnight. Blurry eyed from travel, I didn’t get around to booting the system until about 2:00 AM. The button battery in the RMI had died, so it didn’t remember the time. I got the system to cold load, but the TACL wouldn’t let me log in until I manually set the time. Because of the real time clocks, it had been a couple of years since I had used the SETTIME command. Every permutation I tried yielded some variety of error messages. The strangest error was “Ambiguous time specification”. The command I was typing could be right or wrong, but how could it be ambiguous? I stood there cussing and kicking the machine for an hour. After an hour, the SETIME command magically worked! I brought up the system and went to bed.

As I was waking up the next morning, it dawned on me what had happened. I had been setting up the system during the transition from Daylight Savings Time back to Standard Time. At 3:00 AM that morning, the time would fall back to 2:00 AM. That is the only day of the year when all of the times from 2:00 AM to 3:00 AM occur twice. Once before the time change and a second time after. In fact, the times I was entering were ambiguous! If I had remembered more of the command syntax, I could have specified which 2:00 AM I was referring to.

Jon Marcus