8–4 Troubleshooting

Fail-Safe Booter

8.4 Fail-Safe Booter
The fail-safe booter provides an emergency recovery mechanism when the primary
firmware image contained in flash memory has been corrupted. When flash memor y
has been corrupted, and no image can be loaded safely from the flash, you can run
the fail-safe booter and boot another image from a diskette that is capable of repro-
gramming the flash.
Starting the Fail-Safe Booter
You can start the fail-safe booter in one of two ways:
•If the primary firmware image is unavailable when the system is powered on or
reset, the fail-safe booter runs automatically. When the fail-safe booter runs, the
system emits a series of beeps through the speaker as beep code 1-2-3; that is,
one beep and a pause, followed by two beeps and a pause, followed by three
beeps. After the diskette activity light flashes, insert the AlphaPC 164SX SRM
Console Firmware diskette. The fail-safe booter will load and run the
AlphaBIOS firmware update utility from this diskette. Proceed to Section 7.4
and follow the procedure for updating your flash ROM.
•You can also start the fail-safe booter manually as follows:
1. Power off your system.
2. Slide switch CF7 to off, as described in Section 3.3.
3. Power on your system.
4. Insert the AlphaPC 164SX SRM Console Firmware diskette into the diskett e
drive.
5. Proceed to Section 7.4 and follow the procedures.
BF Fail-safe booter is scanning the diskette
1 Fail-safe booter is loading the AlphaBIOS
2 Fail-safe booter is loading the Debug Monitor
3 Fail-safe booter is loading the SRM console
4 Fail-safe booter is loading the Linux mini-loader
Table 8–2 Post Codes
(Sheet 3 of 3)
Source Post Code
(hex) Description