  SCSI misconfiguration can lead to bugcheck? 
 The Question is:
 
I am installing OpenVMS 7.2 on an AlphaStation 200 4/233. The box has all
 Digital parts (CD, floppy, hard disk) and Kingston memory (64MB). At some
 point in the install process I always get a BUGCHECK.
 
I researched this problem on the Compaq site and see that the OpenVMS team
 usually believes this is a SCSI
 
termination and/or other hardware problem. I made doubly certain that my SCSI
 hard drive and CD are terminated
 
correctly. I have made several attempts with two different models of Digital
 hard drives: RH27A-BU and RH31E-DB.
 
I had no problem upgrading the SRM console ROM to version 7.0-9 prior to
 installing OpenVMS.
 
I can run OpenVMS from the installation CD, manually mount the hard drive,
 initialize it, etc., but at some point
 
in the full installation process the BUGCHECK will appear. The last attempt got
 all the way to the point where I
 
had initialized the drive, mounted it, registered the license, chose all the
 installtion options, etc.
 
Here is the complete error output:
 
Portion Done 0%
 
**** OpenVMS (TM) Alpha Operating System V7.2 - BUGCHECK ****
error log buffers not dumped to SYS$ERRORLOG.DMP
bugcheck code = 00000215: machinechk, machine check while in kernal mode
Crash CPU: 00 Primary CPU: 00 Active CPUs: 00000001
Current Process AXPVMS_INSTALL
Current PSB ID = 1
Image name = DKA400:[SYS0.SYSCOMMON.][SYSEXE]PCSI$MAIN.EXE
Cancelled memory dump, file blocks left = 0,
Dump PTE address = FFEE00
halted CPU 0
halt code 5
halt instruction executed
PC = ffffffff8009c5f0
 
CPU 0 booting
 
Please help.
 
John Fredrickson
Washington, DC
 
 The Answer is :
 
  Please contact your hardware support organization.  Without very
  specific details of the hardware and the hardware configuration,
  this failure could easily have a variety of causes -- and yes, the
  potential causes here include a misconfigured SCSI bus or errant
  SCSI hardware.
 
  A SCSI bus must have precisely two terminators, one at each end of
  the bus. It would be very unusual to see two devices with termination
  on the same bus. At the very least, this would imply the devices were
  on either side of the controller.  Otherwise, you might have an
  over-terminated bus.  And SCSI bus problems.
 
  The RH series SCSI devices are more commonly refered to as the DSP
  series -- these are disks that were made available to system vendors,
  and are not particularly supported by OpenVMS.  Various OEMs tended
  to customize the firmware in the DSP series for the local requirements
  -- the RZ-series equivalents of the DSP series were customized for
  the expectations of OpenVMS, for instance.
 
  For general information on connecting (unsupported) SCSI devices to
  OpenVMS, please see the OpenVMS FAQ.
 
 Answer written or last revised on  19-SEP-2001 
