Seeking some system debugging help

Hello.

I have acquired a Symbolics 3630 but, alas, it doesn't work. I am
seeking some help in narrowing down possible faults before starting to
ship bits and pieces around the world.

The machine is equipped with a harddisk, a tapedrive, 2MW of memory, a
CADII card and ethernet, and naturally a console.

The behaviour of the machine is easily explained. 

I first turn on the console and turn up the brightness to be sure to
be to see everything. At this point it merely flickers
randomly. Brightness controls evidently works.

Next I turn on the main system. The fans winds up as does the disk and
after a short while a deeply toned beep comes. This is supposedly
normal signalling that the disk is ready.

The console picture stabilises and is now pretty steadily black with
some white lines (as the brightness is all the way up).

But then nothing more happens. The red "Fault" lamp does not go out
and there is absolutely nothing on the console.

As the brightness controls works and the picture is stabilising, I
have no immediate reason to suspect the console to be broken or
wrongly connected.

As I understand it, the FEP is an independent computer so I should be
able to talk to it even if a lot of other stuff is not working. Also
according to the manuals, it is the FEP that (sensibly enough) turns
off the Fault lamp.

So my first and foremost question is: how much is the FEP dependent on
in order to run?

Or put another way: how little needs to be working for me to see
lifesigns from it? To what extent will it sense problems in the
connection to the console and other parts of the system?

I am pretty new to the wonderful world of Symbolics, so bear with me
on this rather scetchy problem description.


------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Christian Lynbech       | email:  christian #\@ defun #\. dk 
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Hit the philistines three times over the head with the Elisp reference manual.
                                        - [email protected] (Michael A. Petonic)