Sun E250, NVRAM edit? (Serial Speeds, no console, etc)

Ethan O'Toole ethan at 757.org
Mon Jul 13 19:30:57 CDT 2020


Hello,

   I have an E250 Sun that belonged to a friend that passed away around 
2008. It was colocated at a colocation office I had running in Virginia 
Beach.

   I pulled it out of storage, and would like to check if his public 
website is archived on it. Archive.org only has bits of it. Odds are low 
since it wasn't the main server, but worth a shot.

   I tried the usual Serial port A, but all I get is garbage. Tried all the 
common baud rates I could think of. If it's switched to diag mode, the 
diag stuff comes across in 9600bps.

   I tried the RSC port, it wants a password. Don't know it, didn't see 
anywhere online on how to reset it.

   I tried hooking up a console. Finally get the power brick in for the 
Samsung 770TFT LCD monitor I've held onto (it has 13w3.) At first it 
wasn't working. Tried both Type 5 and type 6 keyboards attached. No 
console.

   I found by removing the NVRAM, it will finally throw console. But no 
keyboard input. Stop-A, nothing. If I shove the NVRAM back in while it's 
running it immediatley goes black.

   Anyone know if the NVRAM strings are stored in plaintext in the NVRAM 
IC? If I were to dig out all the hardware that should be able to dump that 
chip is it something that is human readable / editable? I've done the 
coin cell hack on them before, but from memory the keyboard worked and it 
wasn't a big deal to do program in replacement MAC. But this is different, 
I need options removed.

   I'm thinking this thing has values in the NVRAM that are turning off the 
console and doing something funky to the serial baud rate. Or perhaps the 
baud rate in Solaris is set to something funky.

 			- Ethan



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