HDD dead on a HP 16702A Logic Analyzer

[Signora Rossi]

Hi folks,
I just got this old logic analyzer from HP/Agilent from my boss. That's the good point.
The draw back is, the HDD seems to have a problem on start up:
After the DHCP section it goes as this:
/dev/root/ file system file data write error
...
file system inode 242 marked bad
file system can't mark inode 242 bad
/dev/root filesystem disabled

To me this seems to be quite severe and not only because it's a nice machine, it also has an emotional value to me (passed away friend) and I want to continue with this machine.
Ok, I've looked at Agilent with the result there's nothing to download except some documents. In these documents it's said, 'use the system CD and be happy'. I have another SCSI drive but no system CD...... And that seems to be my problem.
Does anyone have an idea (already tried google...) where to find at least an ISO of this CD?
:-) Sarah

[acbern]

not sure this will help here, but I had a failing hp 86100a with a dead 2.5" hdd. old type, 5gb, ibm. so I looked for an old used hdd of exactly same type, which by coincidence i did find right away (there are so many different products that search may take some time). since I had nothing to loose, and encouraged from youtube videos,  i opened up the broken hdd, removed the disk and put it into the purchased disk. care with dust, and with magnetics, so best use a plastic tool to move the disk. I did not really expect this to work well, but surprisingly, it did. saved this to a pata ssd right away, and now have a working 86100a.
also, there are hdd repair tools available, so if the failure is just a corrupted sector, there may be a way to fix this.
and last, have you looked at bitsavers? maybe there is an image posted there.

[kc9qix]

You can request a CD from Agilent (or whatever they're calling themselves this week) here: http://software.cos.agilent.com/LogicAnalyzerSW/16700.stm

[PaulAm]

I was just going to post that link.  They'll send it to you for free.

It would be nice to replace the scsi drive with a flash drive, but that market's pretty much dried up and the ones that are available are very pricey.

[Signora Rossi]

Thanks for the link, I just filled out the order :-)
SCSI flash drive, sounds expensive...
Fortunately I don't throw away old drives ;-)
Thanks,
:-) Sarah

[kevinpt]

In a way it is too bad that HP switched to SCSI because IDE to CF adapters are easier to come by. SCSI card readers to exist though. In the 90's SCSI PCMCIA readers were in more common use and they are available for cheap on eBay. You should be able to cobble one in along with a CF to PC card adapter.

[free_electron]

any scsi drive below 30 Gb will do fine in that machine.

order the software install cd for free from agilent.

boot the system with the cd in the drive . the hp-ux base console will come up. follow the install instructions that come with the cd.

the cd will format the drive, partition it and  do all work for you.
it takes a good 30 to 40 minutes to complete but is fully automated.

[forjack842]

You can request a CD from Agilent (or whatever they're calling themselves this week) here: http://software.cos.agilent.com/LogicAnalyzerSW/16700.stm

Morning all,
Has anyone found the new Keysight url for this form? Tried a few variations using their new name but nothing. Have the same 16702A.
Thanks Alot!
Jack KG6INX

[davorin]

Hmm...anyone got one of those Installation CDs?
Keysight site only lists loads of Manuals and papers...but no Firmware/Software...

[kc9qix]

There's been some discussion on this over on the HP/Agilent Test Equipment Yahoo group - apparently the CDs are no longer available. But, Keysight has the software available for download on their FTP site.

I haven't tried downloading it, but here is the link:
ftp://ftp.keysight.com/cos/outbound/16700/

[nbritton]

Does it boot to a prompt? I think all you need to do is run a file system check (fsck) to fix the corruption.

[davorin]

Speaking of SCSI...as booting from network does not work from a Linux System...

Which SCSI CDROM drives are compatible with the 16702A?

Did HP also use 512-byte sector SCSI CDROM drives like Sun Microsystem did in the past?

And what is the difference between "B3760_14243.iso" and "16700_A0290.iso" ?

[Stray Electron]

    No experience with the SCSI drives used in HP test equipment but I do have experience with a lot of the old computers that used SCSI drives.  FYI, at least some of the SCSI CD drives contained jumpers on the board to would make the drive default to 256, 512 or 1024 bytes per sector.  A lot of computers didn't send the bytes per sector command to the drive before attempting to boot from it so getting the bytes/sector correct was mandatory before you could boot. So if you have trouble booting from the CD, try another drive or try to change the bytes/sector on your drive.

[davorin]

Well those CDROM with bytes/sector jumpers are hard to find...even my old Apple SC CD drive didn't had it...so needed a original Sun CDROM drive which was fixed to 512bytes/sector...

At least I got lucky finding a new 2-button PS/2 mouse from Ebay which works out of the box on the 16702A ;-)

[Wuerstchenhund]

No experience with the SCSI drives used in HP test equipment but I do have experience with a lot of the old computers that used SCSI drives.  FYI, at least some of the SCSI CD drives contained jumpers on the board to would make the drive default to 256, 512 or 1024 bytes per sector. 

What drives were these? I've quite a bit of experience with non-x86 platforms and SCSI drives but I've never seen a CDROM with 256byte or 1024byte setting, only 512byte (standard fixed disk sector size) and 2048byte (CDROM sector size), and I'm not aware of any computer platform using anything else than 512byte/sector or 2048byte/sector for booting from a CDROM drive. The IBM AS/400 used 540bytes/sector for fixed disks if I remember correctly but still 2048bit/sector for CDROM storage.

Well those CDROM with bytes/sector jumpers are hard to find...even my old Apple SC CD drive didn't had it...so needed a original Sun CDROM drive which was fixed to 512bytes/sector...

Look for Plextor SCSI drives, if I remember right they all came with 512byte jumper, as did most Toshiba SCSI drives.

But I'd be surprised if tf your HP LA needs a 512byte drive, as HP9000 platforms (which I believe is what's in the 16702A) were capable to boot with the standard 2048byte as well.

[davorin]

Just hooked up a Plextor SCSI drives...is recognized fine when doing a "sea" in the boot menu...lists it as:

Code: [Select]

P0              SESCSI.6.0            PLEXTOR CD-ROM PX-40TS
But when doing a "bo p0" it dumps this error:

Code: [Select]

Failed I/O Operation with
ENTRY_IO
Status = -3

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 000000
...

[gslick]

Try this link for a download:
428,532,398 byte B3760_14243-16700-A.02.90.00.zip which contains the
508,782,592 byte B3760_14243-16700-A.02.90.00.ISO image.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Vwo-hnhVM5a2FMQzktcGs0Mzg/view?usp=sharing

This image was created from a working Version 2.90 CD which I received directly from Agilent.


The .ISO image on the Keysight FTP site might be broken and missing the ISL boot section at the end of the image.

[davorin]

I just quickly checked with a Debian HPPA Image...and it boots up just fine with 2048bytes/sector Jumper set (o;

Ah great...3rd time lucky maybe (o;

[davorin]

Bingo :-)

Boots right into CD installer (o;


So you're saying the ISL loader is at the end of ISO image?
Always same size?

[gslick]

Bingo :-)
So you're saying the ISL loader is at the end of ISO image?
Always same size?

I haven't looked at the details of this in a couple of years. A while back I got a physical A.01.51 CD shipped from Agilent which was the last version to support the 16600A series. It had the same problem of not being bootable.

If I remember correctly after investigating for a while I found some documentation for the format of the LIF header which somewhere contains a pointer to the ISL boot section and discovered that the pointer was beyond the end of the disc. I took a working A.02.xx CD and located and extracted the ISL boot section and appended it to the end of the A.01.51 CD image. I had to add some padding before the ISL boot section to locate it to match the pointer in the LIF header.

I think the ISL boot section was around 32MB in size, and the A.02.90 ISO image on the Keysight FTP site is around that amount smaller than the working ISO image I have.

I haven't compared multiple versions of A.01.xx and A.02.xx CDs to see if the ISL boot section is the same in every version I have.

[davorin]

I just compared the two IOS images...they are exactly the same...well expect the different size....

There is some ISL header at the beginning of both ISO images....maybe somewhere there is the offset to the actual loader....

I'm curious about the installer/loader since my 16702A recognizes as bootable partition also my pfSense gateway with TFTPD (o;
So would be a nice way to install from network without the having a real HPUX server....

The E4406A can be booted also from TFTPD....

[gslick]

Just in case someone is interested in more details...

I'm not sure if there is official HP-UX documentation for this somewhere. Here's something I found looking for this again today:

/*
 * volume header for "LIF" format volumes
 */
struct   lifvol {
   short   vol_id;
   char   vol_label[6];
   u_int   vol_addr;
   short   vol_oct;
   short   vol_dummy;
   u_int   vol_dirsize;
   short   vol_version;
   short   vol_zero;
   u_int   vol_number;
   u_int   vol_lastvol;
   u_int   vol_length;
   char   vol_toc[6];
   char   vol_dummy1[198];

   u_int   ipl_addr;
   u_int   ipl_size;
   u_int   ipl_entry;

   u_int   vol_dummy2;
};


Here is a hex dump of the first 256 bytes of the 508,782,592 byte B3760_14243-16700-A.02.90.00.ISO image:

0000:0000  8000 4953 4c31 3020-0000 0008 1000 0000  ..ISL10 ........
0000:0010  0000 0002 0001 0000-0000 0001 0000 0001  ................
0000:0020  0002 aea5 0402 2622-4110 0000 0000 0000  ..®¥..&"A.......
0000:0030  0000 0000 0000 0000-0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
0000:0040  0000 0000 0000 0000-0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
0000:0050  0000 0000 0000 0000-0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
0000:0060  0000 0000 0000 0000-0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
0000:0070  0000 0000 0000 0000-0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
0000:0080  0000 0000 0000 0000-0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
0000:0090  0000 0000 0000 0000-0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
0000:00a0  0000 0000 0000 0000-0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
0000:00b0  0000 0000 0000 0000-0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
0000:00c0  0000 0000 0000 0000-0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
0000:00d0  0000 0000 0000 0000-0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
0000:00e0  0000 0000 0000 0000-0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
0000:00f0  1c70 0000 0000 f000-0000 ae28 0000 0000  .p....ð...®(....

The ipl_addr address value here is 0x1c700000, which is 477,102,080 bytes. That offset is just slightly longer than the 477,087,744 byte 16700_A0290.iso image on the Keysight FTP site.

[davorin]

I can try to dump the end to a file and see if it is booting...otoh...stupid me (o;

I assume I can't tell that thing which filesystem to load after it boots up like in Linux (o;

[fisafisa]

HI.
I am interested as well in a working .iso.
The one in the ftp site has the wrong size....
The google drive directory specified in this forum is no longer accessible.

Thanks

[gslick]

HI.
I am interested as well in a working .iso.
The one in the ftp site has the wrong size....
The google drive directory specified in this forum is no longer accessible.

Thanks

You can currently find these versions here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8Vwo-hnhVM5eUg1QVhGWlBxYVE

B3760_14108-16700-A.02.01.00.ZIP
B3760_14184-16700-A.02.50.00.ZIP
B3760_14205-16700-A.02.60.00.ZIP
B3760_14222-16700-A.02.70.00.ZIP
B3760_14241-16700-A.02.80.00.ZIP
B3760_14243-16700-A.02.90.00.ZIP

https://archive.org/details/B3760-14693_16700_A.02.00.00
https://archive.org/details/B3760-14108_16700_A.02.01.00
https://archive.org/details/B3760-14184_16700_A.02.50.00
https://archive.org/details/B3760-14205_16700_A.02.60.00
https://archive.org/details/B3760-14222_16700_A.02.70.00
https://archive.org/details/B3760-14241_16700_A.02.80.00
https://archive.org/details/B3760-14243_16700_A.02.90.00

Those images were created from all of the original HP / Agilent CD-ROM discs that I currently have for A.02.xx versions of the 16700 series logic analyzer software.

If you have a 16700 series you want the A.02.90.00 version.

If you have a 16600 series you want the A.01.51.00 version.
(Important: see the readme.txt)

The other earlier versions are just there for any possible historical interest.

https://archive.org/details/B3760-14601_16600_A.01.01.00
https://archive.org/details/B3760-14649_16600_A.01.40.00
https://archive.org/details/B3760-14672_16600_A.01.50.00
https://archive.org/details/B3760-14684_16600_A.01.51.00