[LispM] Installation of Genera on a 3640

[Thomas Hühn]

Hi all

Yesterday we have been trying to bring a Symbolics 3640 to life, which
exists in the computer museum of our university.

We only got to the FEP command prompt (after "Hello"). We were able to
see a directory listing of the disks, but weren't able to start the
machine from the disk. Neither from the other disks (which once belonged
to its sister machines).

After some hours we built in a tape drive, because we have backup tapes
(seem to be for complete restoration of the disks) of at least two
machines and the three tape Genera 7.1 installation set.

How on earth can we install from tape? We tried just about every FEP
command that the <HELP> button shows us.

The installation manual we have basically says that we should type
something at the command processor or somewhere else (but definitely
while running the machine).

That can't be true. It must be possible (okay, it should be) to install
the machine from scratch. No other Symbolics for Netbooting is available
(yes, one disk has a netboot world).

Do you have any tips or even know about an installation guide in the
net?

Thomas

P.S. Those of you who understand German might want to look at
news://de.alt.folklore.computer; the person who runs the museum has posted
another call for help today under
<3D40FB85.83817F05@informatik.uni-stuttgart.de>.