Read Before Installing MPE/iX Release 7.0 (C.70.00) (30216-90313)

4 Chapter1

Information You Need Before Installing MPE/iX 7.0

Release Notes

Core Operating System

JAGad45435 Boot delayed in MPE/iX 7.0 due to DVD-ROM being conﬁgured.

During System Boot, MPE/iX attempts to Mount all disk volumes that are

conﬁgured and present. On N-Class and A-Class (PCI Systems), if you

conﬁgure a DVD-ROM (CD-ROM) type of device and it does not contain a

valid MPE/iX Volume, the system is forced to wait for a full “time-out”

period of two minutes.

There are two possible workarounds:

1. Keep an MPE/iX Software Release CD-ROM mounted in the drive at all

times.

2. Delete the DVD-ROM device from your conﬁguration except when you

need to run HPINSTAL. A variation would be to maintain two

conﬁgurations: one with the DVD-ROM; and the other without the

DVD-ROM.

JAGad45757 Since MPE/iX 6.5 release LDEV #1 may show an incorrect Device

ID in some cases.

When using some system I/O information gathering tools, the device

information for LDEV #1, LDEV #7 and LDEV #20 may not be correct. You

may gather this information using the ODE (Ofﬂine Diagnostic

Environment) tool Mapper (NIO systems) OR Mapper2 (PCI systems).

Networking

JAGad30941 PCI 100Base-T Reports High Retry (Collision) Counts and

Deferrals.

On ﬁrst-release MPE/iX 7.0, PCI 100Base-T LAN adapters operating in

10Mbps half-duplex mode can experience unusually high percentages of

transmit collisions and deferrals on both N- and A-class, mainly during ﬁle

transfers. A fact of life for half-duplex networks, collisions are

automatically retried by LAN hardware, but throughput suffers if they

occur too often. Although no other speed-duplex combination currently

exhibits the same problem, 10/half is unfortunately the most common

mode for legacy networks. On MPE/iX, collision (or retry)

statistics are available to network administrators via the

:LINKCONTROL;STATUS=S command.

The cause of the problem has been traced to occasional unexplained delays

on the PCI I/O bus. These delays happen to last just long enough to give

earlier transmitted LAN frames enough time to travel to the remote,

whose subsequent responses then collide when transmission resumes. The

delays, which are beyond the control of 100Base-T software and hardware,