Ivory board help needed [Urgent]

[webster%SW.MCC.COM@MCC.COM (Dallas Webster)]

I have some friends who are in Germany on a very tight schedule trying
to set up some HW/SW on Sun 3/260 that includes a UX400 Ivory board.
They have hit some snags and their relative isolation has made it
difficult for them to get answers through normal channels.  I thought
I'd toss this out to the SLUG and see if anyone has some insight as to
how they might solve their problem.  (Actually, the board is damaged
and that is likely to be the source of their problems.  But they
haven't been able to get a definitive answer as to whether the damage
is fatal or "cosmetic".)

Here is a description of their symptoms.  My apologies for
inaccuracies that I introduce or important details that I wash over.
I am not familiar with the Ivory environment, and I am relaying this
from a couple of phone conversations.

Initially, the symptom was that the Sun and Ivory board wouldn't boot,
giving the messages:

  Communication area 76968 words too small
  Requested size of host and guest buffers won't fit

The Sun would boot alone, however.  The Sun+Ivory combo had not been
used for awhile, though the last time it had been tried, it was
working.  In the interim, someone had tried to install a disk
controller board next to the Lisp board and may made significant
contact with the Lisp board.  They tried all the standard things,
reseating the board, cleaning the contacts, etc.  They noticed that
one of the pins (J3B9) was bent, and it broke off when they (gently)
tried to straighten it.  They have not been able to find out whether
the pin is active (According to Ivory documentation, 110 of the 270
pins are not used.  But at Symbolics, only their engineers know which
ones are used, and my friends haven't tracked down an answer on
J3B9.), so they have been trying to forge ahead as optimistically as
they can.  The error state has now changed.  When they start the Ivory
Service process, and the subsequent Ivory Life process, none of the
expected subprocesses (Ivory Net and Ivory Disk) get started up.  The
lights indicate that it is loading the device PROM but it never gets
initialized. They only get the message

  Ivory SEL channel (host file): Bad file number


About all I can add to this is that the board was installed
alternately in slots 8 and 9, in accordance with advice from Symbolics
HW personnel.  Another person at Symbolics has just told me that it
must be installed in slot 7.  They have not yet tried this, but are
getting ready to.

I appreciate any advice you can give me.  Please respond directly to
me, as well as to the net, since this is time critical.


Dallas Webster
webster@mcc.com
(512)338-3608