27 Dec
2007
27 Dec
'07
6:08 a.m.
I just got a Sun 3/60, 8MB RAM, no disk. I have several questions:
1. Were these used with an external disk? There is some room inside the
machine, but there are also several strange looking capacitors there.
2. With diag switch set to "norm", there is nothing (no output) on the
serial console; the machine just blinks one of the LEDs. With diag
switch set to "diag", the following appears:
Boot PROM Selftest
PROM Checksum Test
Context Reg Test
Segment Map Wr/Rd Test
Segment Map Address Test
Page Map Test
Memory Path Data Test
NXM Bus Error Test
Interrupt Test
TOD Clock Interrupt Test
MMU Access Bit Test
MMU Access/Modify Bit Test
MMU Invalid Page Test
MMU Protected Page Test
Parity Test
Memory Size = 0x00000008 Megabytes
Selftest passed.
Type a character within 10 seconds to enter Menu Tests...
(e for echo
mode)
Is that a sign of EEPROM problem? Failed battery?
--
If you cut off my head, what would I say? Me and my head, or me and my body?
27 Dec
27 Dec
10:45 a.m.
Edward Tomasz Napierala wrote:
I just got a Sun 3/60, 8MB RAM, no disk. I have
several questions:
Do you have the monitor and/or keyboard for it, too?
1. Were these used with an external disk? There is
some room inside the
machine, but there are also several strange looking capacitors there.
Yes, they were used with either an external SCSI disk enclosure
known as a "shoebox" or with a network disk (NFS). The latter
setup was known as a diskless workstation.
2. With diag switch set to "norm", there is
nothing (no output) on the
serial console; the machine just blinks one of the LEDs. With diag
switch set to "diag", the following appears:
OK; if you have a keyboard plugged in, then the boot messages
will go to the built-in framebuffer (i.e. the video monitor).
Without a keyboard, the machine boots up "headless" and sends
messages to the serial port.
Boot PROM Selftest
PROM Checksum Test
Context Reg Test
Segment Map Wr/Rd Test
Segment Map Address Test
Page Map Test
Memory Path Data Test
NXM Bus Error Test
Interrupt Test
TOD Clock Interrupt Test
MMU Access Bit Test
MMU Access/Modify Bit Test
MMU Invalid Page Test
MMU Protected Page Test
Parity Test
Memory Size = 0x00000008 Megabytes
Selftest passed.
Type a character within 10 seconds to enter Menu Tests...
(e for echo
mode)
Is that a sign of EEPROM problem? Failed battery?
It looks OK to me. What happens if you wait 10 seconds? Do you
get a monitor prompt? To boot from the external SCSI disk (which
I presume you don't yet have) there's a "boot sd(0,0,0)" command
(or similar). I think there may be help built-in at the monitor
command level, but it all depends on how old the monitor ROMs
are. Old versions had less helpful help than newer versions...
--
John Honniball
coredump at gifford.co.uk
3:28 p.m.
On Dec 27, 2007 10:45 AM, John Honniball <coredump at gifford.co.uk> wrote:
Edward Tomasz Napierala wrote:
I have some shoeboxes in storage for those machines. I think they have
1 Gig 5 1/4 full ht drives inside and have the oldstyle 3 row 50 pin
rectangular SCSI connector. No CPUs anymore, nor cables.. Very heavy
for shipping.. If you need one let me know.
Paxton
--
Paxton Hoag
Astoria, OR
USA
I just got a Sun 3/60, 8MB RAM, no disk. I have
several questions:
Do you have the monitor and/or keyboard for it, too?
1. Were these used with an external disk? There
is some room inside the
machine, but there are also several strange looking capacitors there.
Yes, they were used with either an external SCSI disk enclosure
known as a "shoebox" or with a network disk (NFS). The latter
setup was known as a diskless workstation. 
1:32 p.m.
Edward Tomasz Napierala said:
I just got a Sun 3/60, 8MB RAM, no disk. I have
several questions:
1. Were these used with an external disk? There is some room inside the
machine, but there are also several strange looking capacitors there.
You can use a SCSI disk there, but then, depending on the model and
capacity, you need to set some parameters in /etc (IIRC some format.dat
file) to make it known to SunOS. Typically, those machines where used as
diskless clients from a bootp server with sufficient storage. The client
boots from the network and receives a tftpboot image which then pulls in
the SunOS kernel and uses NFS to mount some /export/root, /export/swap and
/usr file systems. /export/root and /export/swap are per-system instances
of the root file system and swap file for the client, /usr is usually
readonly for all clients.
Unless you have a boot media (QIC24 tape or floppies) and can hook an
external drive to the machine, you better set up a server for diskless
clients. This can also be a Sparc machine.
2. With diag switch set to "norm", there is
nothing (no output) on the
serial console; the machine just blinks one of the LEDs. With diag
switch set to "diag", the following appears:
Boot PROM Selftest
PROM Checksum Test
Context Reg Test
Segment Map Wr/Rd Test
Segment Map Address Test
Page Map Test
Memory Path Data Test
NXM Bus Error Test
Interrupt Test
TOD Clock Interrupt Test
MMU Access Bit Test
MMU Access/Modify Bit Test
MMU Invalid Page Test
MMU Protected Page Test
Parity Test
Memory Size = 0x00000008 Megabytes
Selftest passed.
Type a character within 10 seconds to enter Menu Tests...
(e for echo
mode)
Is that a sign of EEPROM problem? Failed battery?
The above is correct behaviour. With the diag switch set to NORM, the
machine expects a keyboard/mouse and monitor; it will then usually wait
for a boot command at the ">" prompt. Typing "b le()" attempts to
boot
from the server; "b st(0,,0)" would boot a
QIC tape to be connected, "b
(0,3,0)/vmunix" should boot a disk connected
to SCSI with normal settings
IIRC. You should also see a ">" prompt after self test at the serial
console.
Regards
Holger
28 Dec
28 Dec
2:19 a.m.
I just got a Sun 3/60, 8MB RAM, no disk. I have
several questions:
1. Were these used with an external disk?
Yes, at least sometimes. That's what the DD50 connector on the back
panel is for.
2. With diag switch set to "norm", there is
nothing [...]
I thought the -3/60 was advanced enough to notice no keybaord and
switch to serial console even if it's set to use keybaord/screen. I
see three possibilities here:
(1) I'm wrong, and at least some -3/60s, including yours, try to use
screen/keyboard when set that way in the NVRAM, even if no keyboard
is connected.
(2) It's set for output to video and input from serial. (This would be
an unusual way to set it, but I think it's possible.)
(3) It's broken (though, to my eye, the diag output you quote gives no
obvious evidence to support this theory).
If it's (1), you'll need at least a keybaord; unless you're good enough
with -3/60 monitors to type the necessary commands blind, you'll need a
display too. If it's (2), you can fix it over the serial port, but,
again, unless you can do it typing blind, you'll need a display.
If you cut off my head, what would I say? Me and my
head, or me and
my body?
Caught you! Trick question - if I cut off your head, you wouldn't be
saying anything!
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
8:09 a.m.
der Mouse wrote:
(2) It's set for output to video and input from
serial. (This would be
an unusual way to set it, but I think it's possible.)
I could see that happening for a 'hobby' machine snagged from a dumpster if
all the person had was the CPU unit. It'd be reasonably easy to hook some form
of graphical display to the machine, but more tricky to emulate a missing Sun
keyboard.
It was actually my plan for our Sun 2 machine as we were in exactly that
situation; we just had the system unit, but no keyboard or display. Finding a
capable display would be easy enough though, and we had a few VT220's laying
around with dead LOPTs - I was planning on stripping one of those down so it
would just run as a nice RS232 keyboard.
(Unfortunately I got as far as verifying that the system was healthy, just
using a pure RS232 console, then more urgent things needed attention - now I'm
a few thousand miles away :-)
cheers
Jules
2:10 p.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
der Mouse wrote:
Are you sure? IIRC the displays have ECL connections.
(2) It's set for output to video and input
from serial. (This would be
an unusual way to set it, but I think it's possible.)
I could see that happening for a 'hobby' machine snagged from a dumpster
if all the person had was the CPU unit. It'd be reasonably easy to hook
some form of graphical display to the machine, but more tricky to
emulate a missing Sun keyboard.
It was actually my plan for our Sun 2 machine as we were in exactly that
situation; we just had the system unit, but no keyboard or display.
Finding a capable display would be easy enough though, and we had a few
VT220's laying around with dead LOPTs - I was planning on stripping one
of those down so it would just run as a nice RS232 keyboard.
30 Dec
30 Dec
2:08 p.m.
On 1228T0519, der Mouse wrote:
Thanks, it seems that was the case. Fortunately the "le" test from
the Test Menu fails (for some reason) dropping me to the monitor prompt:
Extended Test Menu: (Enter 'q' to return to Monitor)
Cmd - Test
le - AMD Ethernet Test
mk - Mouse/Keyboard Ports Test
rs - Serial Ports Test
Cmd=>le
AMD Ethernet Tests: (Enter 'q' to return to Test Menu)
Cmd - Test
w - Wr/Rd CSR1 Reg Test
l - Local Loopback Test
x - External Loopback Test
Cmd=>w
Test Options: (Enter 'q' to return to Test Menu)
Cmd - Option
f - Loop forever
h - Loop forever with Halt on error
l - Loop once with Loop on error
n - Loop forever with error messages inhibited
<cr> - Loop once
Cmd=
Address Error, PC fetch at 0FEF1052
... And this was enough to change "Primary Terminal", according
to http://www.sun3arc.org/FAQ/bootrom.phtml, from 0x12 to 0x10:
No idea why it prints banner twice.
[..]
There are ways to say things without using one's lungs. You could blink
in Morse code, for example. ;-)
--
If you cut off my head, what would I say? Me and my head, or me and my body?
I just got a
Sun 3/60, 8MB RAM, no disk. I have several questions:
1. Were these used with an external disk?
Yes, at least sometimes. That's what the DD50 connector on the back
panel is for.
2. With diag switch set to "norm",
there is nothing [...]
I thought the -3/60 was advanced enough to notice no keybaord and
switch to serial console even if it's set to use keybaord/screen. I
see three possibilities here:
(1) I'm wrong, and at least some -3/60s, including yours, try to use
screen/keyboard when set that way in the NVRAM, even if no keyboard
is connected. q 1f
EEPROM 01F: 12? 10
That fixed things. After reboot in "NORM" mode, I get:
Selftest Completed.
Sun Workstation, Model Sun-3/60C/G.
ROM Rev 2.8.3, 8MB memory installed, Serial #59096.
Ethernet address 08:00:20:06:A7:85.
EEPROM: Using RS232 A port.
Selftest Completed.
Sun Workstation, Model Sun-3/60C/G.
ROM Rev 2.8.3, 8MB memory installed, Serial #59096.
Ethernet address 08:00:20:06:A7:85.
Testing 8 Megabytes of Memory ... Completed.
Auto-boot in progress...
EEPROM boot device...sd(0,0,0)
Device not found
If you cut off
my head, what would I say? Me and my head, or me and
my body?
Caught you! Trick question - if I cut off your head, you wouldn't be
saying anything!
5978
days inactive
5981
days old
7 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
coredump＠gifford.co.uk -
holger.veit＠iais.fraunhofer.de -
innfoclassics＠gmail.com -
james＠machineroom.info -
jules.richardson99＠gmail.com -
mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA -
trasz＠FreeBSD.org