Re: 2nd CPU on a Sun Blade 2000 problem

On 2008-10-07, pne.chomko@xxxxxxxxxxx <pne.chomko@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 30, 10:43 pm, "DoN. Nichols" <dnich...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[ ... ]

        Hmm ... I'm pretty sure that I have changed a CPU with power on,
even though I should not.  Everything survived.

        But this *may* be a function of which end of the connector lifted
clear first.  You may need a new system board.


Yes, this what I was afraid of.

I've made it a practice to unplug the power cord and loop it
through the handle on the power supply when changing CPUs.

[ ... ]

        Shortly before you would normally get the keyboard and monitor
enabled, you should see the LED in the power button flashing a few
times.  If necessary, you can hit the button during this time one quick
push, wait a full second, then another quick push which should reset the
environment variables to the default values.  Note that they will reset
to whatever they were next boot -- unless you type "set-defaults" to the
"ok" prompt.

This is how I originally installed Solaris 9 on the system.

I assume the following happens if my system board is not dead, or can
it be partially dead and still work with the serial port and RS-232
terminal?

It can be partially dead -- but dead from hot-swapping CPUs
would probably keep this from showing anything.

1) I've seen systems which would only work with a single CPU in
slot 0 -- two CPUs and it locks up.

2) I've seen systems which work fine until I plug in the
external fibre channel -- at which point the internal disks
won't work because the loop is incomplete.

3) I've exchanged e-mail with a friend troubleshooting
a system which turned out to have the on-board fibre channel
drives not working.

4) The same fellow later wound up with a system board which worked
fine for the on-board fibre channel drives, but which could
not see the internal SCSI DVD-ROM drive. The same drive, when
installed in an external box and connected to the external fibre
channel worked fine.

So -- yes the system board can be only partially functional. I
could see the PCI bus dead (so a PCI framebuffer would not work), or
with the UPA bus dead (so the Creator-3D framebuffer would not work).

Hmm ... I just pulled a SUN-PC board out of a Sun Blade 100
which looks like something which was described in a thread here. On the
main bracket it has (from the top)

Audio input
Audio output
single USB
Twisted Pair Ethernet
VGA connector

and on the secondary bracket:

Parallel port (DB-25 F)
Serial port (DE-9 M)

Obviously, this would not work to drive the KVM until it booted fully
and got access to a virtual disk with MS-DOS or Windows on it. But it
*could* be installed in a SB-2000, and lead to confusion.

[ ... ]

        Or -- you could go the way I did to get two SB-2000 systems,
with 2 GB of RAM, and (supposedly) a 900 MHz CPU.  As it turned out,
both systems had 1200 MHz CPUs, which have been combined into a single
system.  He's  starting the auction at $99.99.  The auction number is:

        260292699541

The shipping cost will be higher, but you will get lots of spares.

That one closed at $99.99 with the winning bidder named
"titin_fl".

If that wasn't you, he's got another one up at the same starting
price ($99.99) which closes on the 14th of October.

        Oh yes -- if you *do* get the "ok" prompt, you might want to
look at the value of "output-device=".  If it is just "screen", fine.
If it is something like "screen:r1440x900x76" then it is setting the
framebuffer to a specific resolution -- which may or may not be the
right one for your monitor.


Will do.

        Anyway -- if you get the "ok" prompt, once you have passed all
the tests -- and perhaps reset the "output-device" to the default value,
you start adding things one at a time to see if things stop working.
First, I think, would be the memory.  Then the framebuffer.  Power it up
after each of these, so you know whether it stops working.  Do you have
a separate monitor and keyboard which you can use with this system,
avoid the KVM until you have everything else tested, since it is the
most unknown part of the equation.

Yes, I can hook the Sun system up without the PC and KVM switch. I
might try this before I hook up a terminal but sort of what to know
how to troubleshoot the system using a terminal anyway.

O.K. The basic rule of reduce the system under test to the
minimum number of parts needed at first. :-)

Good Luck,
Don.

--
Email: <dnichols@xxxxxxxxxxx> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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