HP-UX

First, I have never seen a healthy K box take over 30 minutes to boot. I could believe one hour. After that, I must assume the box is in trouble.

"Stable storage" is a set of PROM's used by the box to store a very few bits of data. The K box uses an set of numbers called a path to refer to particular I/O devices. The "console path" is the path to the console. A console path might be something like "0/0/4/0.0". This is the path to a serial port in the box. The box needs a console path so that it can communicate during the boot process. And this is where you are stuck. Note that the box has not yet attempted to locate a boot device. It just wants to talk to the console. 9600, 8-1-none is correct. But the box should happily get past this point with nothing at all plugged into the console port. The box cannot locate the serial port. In this situation, which normal happens only when you boot a freshly manufactured box, the firmware scans all I/O devices in can find. The first serial port located is assigned to be the console and its path is written into stable storage. If this is failing, the box must not be able to locate any serial ports. The only remedy for this that I know of is place a service call and have HP fix the machine. I am a software guy, not a hardware guy. I might try cycling power, slapping the side of the box, and even reseating the boards. But after that, calling HP is all I know how to do.

But then you say you see a "default display menu"? I don't know what that is. But if the box displayed some menu while it is trying to initialize a console path, then it is behaving in a way that I don't understand. What exactly does this menu say?

The plugged in screen has 8 boxes (presumably matching the keyboards function keys?) but has nothing printed in them. I think this is standard, my 725/100 does this.

Refering to the serial port I mean that you may need a cable that swaps the RX and TX pins over (pins 2 and 3) in order to get anything in or out of the terminal. This is often called a NULL modem.

When you take the console and only plug it into the power outlet and not the SPU (yet) you get a default menu on screen. Yes, the 8 white boxes with text on them matches the function keys. That is why i say a default menu cause the console doesn't even need anything except power to display this menu and this is why i deem it useless.

ok, maybe it is time to call HP.......but for such an old box i wonder if it is worth it. We have no warranty nor support agreement on this box hence my flood of questions to you guys.

thanks a million