SPARCClassic won't boot cdrom

[Alan Perry]

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
>>