1 Aug
2015
1 Aug
'15
7:49 p.m.
Hi all!
I recently acquired a SPARCclassic, which is my first bit of Sun hardware. Having an
awful time getting it to boot from the CD-ROM. I have tried a bunch of different
terminators and several different cables, but whenever I try to boot I get this:
ok boot cdrom -s
Boot device: /iommu/sbus/espdma at 4,8400000/esp at 4,8800000/sd at 6,0:d File and args:
-s
The SCSI bus is hung. Perhaps an external device is turned off.
Any ideas as to what might be wrong here? The thing does not seem to send any commands
to the CD-ROM, as the LED never comes on and I don't hear it doing anything...
Thanks!
-Ben
1 Aug
1 Aug
8:14 p.m.
Never had a Classic but I've wrangled plenty of other Sun workstations ...
in general I have always found SCSI on Suns to be very easygoing ... you
generally won't get SCSI errors unless something has gone grossly awry... I
assume no internal disk? If so, definitely disconnect that and give it a
shot ...
This may seem a bit counterintuitive, but have you tried it with no
terminator at all on the external CD-ROM? Sometimes that works.
If this is your first piece of Sun kit, you probably don't have any SBus
SCSI available to test? SBus SCSI 10BT+SCSI are pretty common and
inexpensive; it might be worth picking one up, if only to have something
where the MAC address isn't dependent on the viability of the IDPROM
battery... that's my number one grumble about the old Suns.
Best,
Sean
On Sat, Aug 1, 2015 at 10:49 PM, Benjamin Huntsman <
BHuntsman at mail2.cu-portland.edu> wrote:
Hi all!
I recently acquired a SPARCclassic, which is my first bit of Sun
hardware. Having an awful time getting it to boot from the CD-ROM. I have
tried a bunch of different terminators and several different cables, but
whenever I try to boot I get this:
ok boot cdrom -s
Boot device: /iommu/sbus/espdma at 4,8400000/esp at 4,8800000/sd at 6,0:d File
and args: -s
The SCSI bus is hung. Perhaps an external device is turned off.
Any ideas as to what might be wrong here? The thing does not seem to
send any commands to the CD-ROM, as the LED never comes on and I don't hear
it doing anything...
Thanks!
-Ben
2 Aug
2 Aug
10:17 a.m.
I collect Sun lunchbox systems like the Classic.
When I get the SCSI bus is hung message, I add or remove the SCSI
terminator, depending on whether one is present and, in my experience,
the problem usually goes away.
alan
On 8/1/15 8:14 PM, Sean Caron wrote:
Never had a Classic but I've wrangled plenty of
other Sun workstations ...
in general I have always found SCSI on Suns to be very easygoing ... you
generally won't get SCSI errors unless something has gone grossly awry... I
assume no internal disk? If so, definitely disconnect that and give it a
shot ...
This may seem a bit counterintuitive, but have you tried it with no
terminator at all on the external CD-ROM? Sometimes that works.
If this is your first piece of Sun kit, you probably don't have any SBus
SCSI available to test? SBus SCSI 10BT+SCSI are pretty common and
inexpensive; it might be worth picking one up, if only to have something
where the MAC address isn't dependent on the viability of the IDPROM
battery... that's my number one grumble about the old Suns.
Best,
Sean
On Sat, Aug 1, 2015 at 10:49 PM, Benjamin Huntsman <
BHuntsman at mail2.cu-portland.edu> wrote:
> Hi all!
> I recently acquired a SPARCclassic, which is my first bit of Sun
> hardware. Having an awful time getting it to boot from the CD-ROM. I have
> tried a bunch of different terminators and several different cables, but
> whenever I try to boot I get this:
>
> ok boot cdrom -s
> Boot device: /iommu/sbus/espdma at 4,8400000/esp at 4,8800000/sd at 6,0:d File
> and args: -s
> The SCSI bus is hung. Perhaps an external device is turned off.
>
> Any ideas as to what might be wrong here? The thing does not seem to
> send any commands to the CD-ROM, as the LED never comes on and I don't hear
> it doing anything...
>
> Thanks!
>
> -Ben
>
10:23 a.m.
Are SCSI ID numbers likely to be an issue?
Which ones are most commonly used on SparcClassic?
10:42 a.m.
Are SCSI ID numbers likely to be an issue?
No. Possible, certainly, but I would not say likely.
Which ones are most commonly used on SparcClassic?
Disk at 0, 1, 2, 3; tape at 4, 5; CD at 6; the Classic itself at 7.
Those are what SunOS used, unless you reconfigured your kernel, and my
wild guess is that they're still the commonest, though modern systems
normally classify devices based on what they are rather than what ID
they're at. (I don't know which camp post-SunOS versions of Solaris
fall into, though I would hope it's the one I called `modern'.)
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5:27 a.m.
I recently acquired a SPARCclassic, which is my first
bit of Sun hardware. $
Please don't use paragraph-length lines.
ok boot cdrom -s
Boot device: /iommu/sbus/espdma at 4,8400000/esp at 4,8800000/sd at 6,0:d File and args:
-s
The SCSI bus is hung. Perhaps an external device is turned off.
Any ideas as to what might be wrong here?
Perhaps the SCSI interface is fried. Does it still exhibit the same
symptom with nothing at all plugged into the external SCSI connector?
Perhaps the external CD drive is fried. Have you tried it on another
machine?
Given that there are only four parts involved (the Classic, the drive,
the terminator, and the cable) and you've swapped out two of them
multiple times, those strike me as the most plausible alternatives.
Do any of the terminators you've tried have power-on lights? Most
SPARCstations have a fuse in the terminator power line, which might be
blown - though admittedly in my experience that doesn't lead to a hung
bus, especially if you're using short cables. Can the CD drive be
switched or jumpered to provide its own termination (in which case you
should leave off the external terminator)?
The thing does not seem to send any commands to the
CD-ROM,
It's probably issuing that message very early, likely while still
probing for device presence.
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5:45 a.m.
On 08/01/2015 09:49 PM, Benjamin Huntsman wrote:
Hi all! I recently acquired a SPARCclassic, which is
my first bit of Sun
hardware. Having an awful time getting it to boot from the CD-ROM. I
have tried a bunch of different terminators and several different
cables, but whenever I try to boot I get this:
Assuming this is a stock Sun drive unit, as a first step I'd say open the
drive case and make sure the drive is getting +5 and +12V, and that the
external ID selector switch cables are still attached to the back of the drive.
cheers
Jules
7:58 a.m.
On 8/1/2015 7:49 PM, Benjamin Huntsman wrote:
Hi all!
I recently acquired a SPARCclassic, which is my_*first bit*_ of Sun hardware.
Having an awful time getting it to boot from the CD-ROM. I have tried a bunch of
different terminators and several different cables, but whenever I try to boot I get
this:
ok boot cdrom -s
Boot device: /iommu/sbus/espdma at 4,8400000/esp at 4,8800000/sd at 6,0:d File and args:
-s
The SCSI bus is hung. Perhaps an external device is turned off.
Any ideas as to what might be wrong here? The thing does not seem to send any
commands to the CD-ROM, as the LED never comes on and I don't hear it doing
anything...
Thanks!
-Ben
The early suns were very picky about which drives they liked. There was
an issue with the read size and when the software would change from I
think the standard CDROM 2k size reads to 512, most cdroms would choke
and die.
Use a Sun411 (with a real sun 411 drive) which I think were toshibas and
one other brand, or a plextor. The Toshiba 3401's became very popular
because there was a jumper you could change to render them functional on
sparc stations back in the day, and they were much faster than the
drives in the original 411 cases.
I'm putting in this bit of explanation because of your first paragraph.
If you supplied one of your own Cdrom drives this may be the problem.
thanks
jim
8:14 a.m.
On 2 August 2015 03:49:47 BST, Benjamin Huntsman <BHuntsman at
mail2.cu-portland.edu> wrote:
Hi all!
I recently acquired a SPARCclassic, which is my first bit of Sun
hardware. Having an awful time getting it to boot from the CD-ROM. I
have tried a bunch of different terminators and several different
cables, but whenever I try to boot I get this:
ok boot cdrom -s
Boot device: /iommu/sbus/espdma at 4,8400000/esp at 4,8800000/sd at 6,0:d File
and args: -s
The SCSI bus is hung. Perhaps an external device is turned off.
Any ideas as to what might be wrong here? The thing does not seem to
send any commands to the CD-ROM, as the LED never comes on and I don't
hear it doing anything...
There have probably been enough replies on the CD, so I thought it might be helpful to
mention some other boot options :)
If you have a SCSI disk and controller in another device you can dd an installed system
into the disk. Last I checked qemu sparc worked quite well to install onto an image (or
any number of people on the list could provide a suitable disk image)
Sparcs also netboot well, you just need rarpd and tftpd to get a the bootloader across,
after which bootp and nfsd (or bootparamd if you are very old school :). Even if you get
the CD working it's nice to keep a netboot setup around.
Alternatively if the floppy drive has not expired you can boot from that...
Once you have an OS loaded it gives another way to test the CD
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abs＠absd.org -
aperry＠snowmoose.com -
BHuntsman＠mail2.cu-portland.edu -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
jules.richardson99＠gmail.com -
jws＠jwsss.com -
mouse＠Rodents-Montreal.ORG -
scaron＠umich.edu