3b2 Questions - Answers Appreciated

[Hurf Sheldon]

	We have several 3b2/310's running System 5 version 3.1
	with WinTCP 1.1, net card, 30meg drive, floppy and a 
	4serial/1parallel card. All systems were originally
	3b2/300's that were upgraded by ATT technicians at our
	site.  We have a list of questions that we can't, as yet*,
	find answers to, so if anyone can help in all or in part,
	please respond by reply, e-mail direct to me or phone,
	which ever is easiest for you.

	* We have asked our resident ATT expert, ATT sales reps
	  and perused the manuals rather thoroughly (we think)
	  trying to answer the questions posed.

	Questions:

	1; Is there a way to make a bootable floppy system
	   so we can try to salvage systems that are having a problem
	   without doing the 'Essential utilities, partial restore'
	   route? Essentially a kernal with mount, fsck, makedev
	   etc so we can boot, fsck the hard drive and mount it.

	2; "WARNING: niwrite: ni_send failed - ret code=8"
	   We keep getting this network error repeated about every 
	   thirty seconds that we can't track down and
	   after swapping several boards it is still there so I see it
	   as a software or protocol problem. We have one system
	   directly on the net (h4000 xcvr---->3b2) that doesn't
	   ever show it but any system on our delnii does;
	   (h4000------->DELNII------>3b2) - other systems on the DELNII
	   show no problems (uVaxII, Kinetics FastPath)
	   Network performance and connections don't seem to be affected.
	   Routed and tftpd are turned off. It is vexing.

	   What are the proper diagnostics to run on the net interface
	   and where is the info on them?

	3; Hard drive questions;
		a; Do the 3B2's use a standard configuration hard drive?
		   ie: What will fit and how much is it?

		b; What does it take to mount a second hard drive either
		   in the 3b2 chassis or outside. We have a couple of
		   spare 30meg drives that we would like to put in
		   place of the floppies on a couple of systems. Can that
		   be done? - It looks like the cables to the hard drive
		   port in the back could just be pulled off and connected
		   to another drive, except for the little 2 wire cable
		   from the port to the internal drive. Also what drive
		   selects to use?

		c; Is there a place that rebuilds the drives at an effective
		   cost?

	4; Maintenence Questions;
		a; Does ATT have a mail in program analogous to DEC's
		   DECMAILER program? 

		b; Is there an independent repair facility for 3b2 
		   board level repairs?

		c; Are there any hardware manuals available for the 3b2/310?
	
	5; Software questions;
		a; Is there an 'rdump' around that will allow you to dump
		   to a remote (Ultrix) system.

		b; Is NFS available?

		c; Is there a csh or csh like environment available?
		   


-- 
     Hurf Sheldon			 Network: hurf at ionvax.tn.cornell.edu
     Lab of Plasma Studies		  Bitnet: hurf at CRNLION
     369 Upson Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. 14853  ph:607 255 7267
     I sold my Elan, got a job in science; Now, no one takes me seriously.