[HECnet] Weird boot error

[G.]

On Mon, 18 Nov 2013 22:10:32 -0500, Cory Smelosky wrote:

I picked up an old MicroVAX 3100 with soem an RZ24 and soem RZ23s...I am 
currently trying to see what is on them.   I tried to boot from one and got 
this:

b dka700


-DKA700
?0D NO MSG
?0A CHM FR ISTK
?25 LTL
?53 NO MSG
?59 NO MSG
?53 NO MSG
[...]
?45 BADFILEHDR
?58 ILLIOFUNC
?45 BADFILEHDR

I don't know whether or not to assume it's a corrupted FIELS-11 volume, 
one without system files, or a bad disk.

If you translate into ASCII characters the hexadecimal values at the beginning
of every error message you've received, you get the following:

%SYSBOOT-W-System ROM version less than minimum required for VMS
%SYSBOOT-E-Unable to locate file PKCDRIVER.EXE

For some (strange) reason your MicroVAX ROM decided not to output the above
two messages but to consider every byte as an error message number, and to
output the corresponding error message identification.

Maybe that disk is not a bootable one and/or contains a corrupted volume which
has fouled some MicroVAX ROM routine. So it's very likely that those two error
messages are not relevant or correct, and most of all they cannot be trusted.

HTH,
G.