SPARCClassic won't boot cdrom

[jwsmobile]

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