Re: ultra 60 not booting

From: Beardy (beardy_at_beardy.net)
Date: 11/23/04

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    Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 08:44:54 +0000

    Niall Dalton wrote:
    > Hi Beardy,

    Hello Niall,

    >> Niall, I actually suggested probe-scsi, not probe-all. When you say

    Cool.

    > Sorry - I wrote in haste - probe-scsi fails with the mmu problem.

    :-(

    > I'm going to get a serial cable tomorrow and try to dig a bit deeper -
    > I've not devoted that much time in the last day or two to figure this
    > out.

    You mean that your entire world does not revolve around your
    U60?!? Shame on you ;-)

    > In the last day I have not managed to get any output to the monitor
    > - I'll yank out the video card once I have a serial cable.

    You will need a null-modem cable. If you don't have one,
    search c.u.s in groups.google.com - the topic has been
    discussed at length. You must obv pull the Sun keyboard
    also, otherwise the serial comms will be ignored.

    > By "often not booting at all" I mean I get no signal on the monitor - no
    > sign that even OBP is up and running. The power LED on the front panel
    > does not even light, although the fans are up and running and there is a
    > bit of disk activity from time to time. Definitely no unix boot - or at
    > least not far enough to get the network interface up and running.

    No power LED sounds bad. Like system-board bad. The apparent
    disk activity could be self-generated.

    > Typing boot or boot cdrom on the keyboard (with a solaris install disk
    > in the CD drive) seems to have no effect; I can't see anything, but I
    > was hoping that at least I'd hear some disk activity or see the CD drive
    > start reading. No such luck.
    >
    > Its possible my keyboard connection is dodgy, but I can manage to power
    > up from the keyboard and get some flashing LEDs. The caps lock keys
    > flashes for a while - I suspect letting me know its in POST. After that
    > stops... nothing.

    Keyboard power-on is good, but otherwise :-(

    > Is it possible that a dead video card would stop the machine booting? My
    > experience with non-working Sun boxes is very limited.

    Mine too, unfortunately. In my experience, Sun kit is pretty
    robust. In PeeCee land I have seen dead video cards prevent
    any kind of POST.

    Err... does your U60 have a second frame buffer? ie. Do you
    have both 13W3 and VGA-style video outputs? If yes, then
    which are you using? If its the VGA-style one, then toss it
    and buy a 13W3 to VGA convertor. eBay is your friend, but
    make sure you get the correct gender-ed convertor.

    When you next get to OBP, do:

    setenv diag-switch? true
    setenv diag-level max
    power-off

    Then power on again, and hopefully POST will run. If you can
    snap the serial output to a file and post any POST errors
    here if they occur (hopefully not).

    > I appreciate the suggestions!
    >
    > niall

    No problemo. A U60 with 2X450MHz is worth fighting for IMHO.
    Although many would argue that (sod'em).

    Beardy.

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