18 Jul
2020
18 Jul
'20
5:21 a.m.
Hi Ethan
In theory console can be set to anything but its usually 9600/8/n/1 as I?m sure you?ve
tried.
On some suns unplugging the serial cable is the equivalent of sending a break, so might be
worth a try?
Suns do require full hardware signalling on the console connection so might be worth
checking.
20 Jul
20 Jul
8:33 a.m.
In theory console can be set to anything but its
usually 9600/8/n/1 as
I?m sure you?ve tried.
Oh yea, I see the diags at that speed but everything else is noise. Memory
is kind of hazy since it was 2008 era, but back then I had a Livingston
Portmaster PM-25 hooked to all the colo hosts and I seem to recall this
Sun box never working right. But the owner had it working over ethernet
and didn't care.
I spent all weekend camping / diving so I didn't get back to it. But going
to try to dump the contents of the NVRAM into a file to back it up. Then I
will see if things are plain text or not. If not, maybe try all FF's so I
have a working NVRAM to satisfy it. If it is text, there is definitely a
checksum as I recall. But maybe I can just nuke out the serial console
statement (graphics console disable), and then it will complain about a
checksum mismatch but continue to go?
With the NVRAM out I get graphics console but can never type and it seems
to halt.
On some suns unplugging the serial cable is the
equivalent of sending a break, so might be worth a try?
Suns do require full hardware signalling on the console connection so might be worth
checking.
Hmm I tried sending hard breaks via Putty / Hyperterminal. I was using an
older Dell laptop with a physical RS232 port on it (not USB dongle.) But I
will try that. Also I can't remember how the serial port A works with
regards to the lights out management port? That serial data is somehow
split between the two?
I will definitely mess with it this week. Motivation is high to get it
working then find it and the ultra 5 a home.
Thanks for the reply! Will poke then report back.
- Ethan
--
: Ethan O'Toole
21 Jul
21 Jul
8:28 a.m.
> In theory console can be set to anything but its
usually 9600/8/n/1 as I?m
> sure you?ve tried.
Progress last night.
Pulled the NVRAM (STM M48Y59 or something) and threw it in the Needham
EMP-100. Read contents, nothing that looked like any sort of config
really. I noticed on the mainboard there is an Intel TSOP Flash IC so that
might store a bunch.
Saved the contents, wrote all FF's. Checked to see if it retained that (is
the battery dead?) It seemed to for 1 minute. Shoved it in the E250, and
got both graphics console and serial output finally. It again complained
that the NVRAM contents were invalid (same as with the NVRAM IC removed)
but this time I could actually type on the keyboard. Got past it.
Did a factory defaults option on the NVRAM. Then boot kicked it into
Solaris. I will hopefully find a Solaris 5.10 sparc ISO on archive.org and
the last step is to reset root password.
Ethernet won't work until I re-program a MAC address into the NVRAM, but
those instructions exist out there.
I also found on the mainboard there was a set of jumpers labelled RS-232 /
RS-483? 482? Some other odd standard that isn't 485 and 422. It looks like
the were set to the strange one, so I moved them over to 232.
--
: Ethan O'Toole
1575
days inactive
1578
days old
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