Re: Ultra 10 - no output to monitor

On 3 Dec 2007 04:44:42 GMT, "DoN. Nichols" <dnichols@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On 2007-12-02, Flatulous Maximus <none@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 02 Dec 2007 02:48:17 -0500, Christopher Noyes
<cnoyes72@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Flatulous Maximus wrote:
I have the following system, which I purchased on eBay as parts and
assembled:
Sun Ultra 10 Elite 3D with 512MB

[ ... ]

Sun Type 5 keyboard and mouse
Sun 17-inch CRT

[ ... ]

When I turn the system on, it sounds normal, lights flash on the
keyboard, but the monitor remains black. Stop-A does nothing. I even
attached a PC monitor to the D-sub port, but no joy there either. It
seemed like there was some signalling coming from the CPU to the PC
monitor, but after a couple of flickers, it remained black. As I
mentioned, I have a MicorSPARC that I did system maintenance on for a
few years, so I'm pretty familiar with Sun/Solaris. I'm really
stumped about this. Is the CPU I bought on eBay D.O.A.? Any help
would be appreciated.

[ ... ]

Did you try connecting a terminal to the console port (serial port
A)? It could have all output forced to the serial console in OBP.
Setting the OBP to defaults would fix that.

[ ... ]

Yes, I thought that's what it might be, having read some of the other
threads. I'll give that a try. Thanks.

One other possibility could be that the resolution is set to one
which the monitor will not support. I've had the same problem with A
couple of machines which I have just retired (and thus the
"output-device=" setting was for a resolution which kept our LCD screens
happy, but not the 17" Sun monitor. I got just the same results which
you did -- with the final status being that both the green and amber
LEDs were on on the monitor.

So -- give it the magic keypress which will force the OBP
settings to the defaults (in particular, "Output-Device=screen" without
a resolution on it. The magic keypress is "STOP-N", in case you didn't
know.

If it *does* turn out to be the system board -- you can probably
pick up an Ultra-5 for less money -- and they are the same, just in a
different package -- so you can swap the board to your current box to
take advantage of all the extra room in the Ultra-10 box.

Good Luck,
DoN.

Thanks for the helpful suggestions. I tried Stop-N early on when I
found there was a problem and have tried it several times since. It
has no effect that I can discern. I was thinking of trying a tty
connection to the serial port using a null modem cable from my PC and
HyperTerminal. Do I need to disconnect the keyboard for that? I read
somewhere that you won't get a tty connection if the keyboard is
plugged in. Is it possible the prom battery is dead? It sounds like
I need to replace the prom if that's the case.

Regarding the monitor resolution, the light remains green and there's
no indication of a signal of any kind to the Sun monitor. The hard
drive is currently blank, no system installed, so no monitor
resolution settings coming from Solaris. What's the default monitor
resolution coming from the BIOS? I think the monitor is designed for
1152x900.

I feel like I'm in a little over my head here. I've done a fair
amount of system admin on a working sun box, but have not gotten into
the hardware like this before. I'm much more comfortable in the PC
hardware arena.

Greg
.

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