Discussion:
[rescue] Sun Enterprise 3500 Wont Boot Solaris
PhreakShow Telephone Company
2017-09-19 22:37:31 UTC
Permalink
Im kind of at a loss with this thing

Solaris 10 gives me an error that says short disk read the file just
loaded does not appear to be executable.

Solaris 9 does the same thing

Any ideas?
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rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Dave McGuire
2017-09-19 22:39:25 UTC
Permalink
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
Im kind of at a loss with this thing
Solaris 10 gives me an error that says short disk read the file just
loaded does not appear to be executable.
Solaris 9 does the same thing
Any ideas?
Toasted optical drive?

-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
William Enestvedt
2017-09-19 22:48:46 UTC
Permalink
Is it a disc you burned from an ISO, or a commercial DVD? I have boxed media
for Sol10 and 8 and probably even 9, but I seem to recall burning my own
media and having it not be bootable.

Can you probe the hardware from the Open Boot prompt and see the optical drive
and all the FC-AL disks?

Can you net boot the ISO, shared out over NFS?

- Will
--
Will Enestvedt
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
Im kind of at a loss with this thing
Solaris 10 gives me an error that says short disk read the file just
loaded does not appear to be executable.
Solaris 9 does the same thing
Any ideas?
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
PhreakShow Telephone Company
2017-09-19 22:51:16 UTC
Permalink
I dont have anything set up to net boot anything. Ive booted my SS5
on burned media. FCAL and the CDROM is showing up. Tried a spare
SCSI DVD ROM i had around it recognized it too
Post by William Enestvedt
Is it a disc you burned from an ISO, or a commercial DVD? I have boxed media
for Sol10 and 8 and probably even 9, but I seem to recall burning my own
media and having it not be bootable.
Can you probe the hardware from the Open Boot prompt and see the optical drive
and all the FC-AL disks?
Can you net boot the ISO, shared out over NFS?
- Will
--
Will Enestvedt
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
Im kind of at a loss with this thing
Solaris 10 gives me an error that says short disk read the file just
loaded does not appear to be executable.
Solaris 9 does the same thing
Any ideas?
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
William Enestvedt
2017-09-19 22:59:41 UTC
Permalink
If the OBP sees the hardware, then I would suspect the burned media. (Nothing
personal, honest: it has bitten me, too.)

If no one closer to you has official DVDs, I can probably send you one: I
think we got a ton of extra sets, years ago.

- Will
--
Will Enestvedt
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
I dont have anything set up to net boot anything. Ive booted my SS5
on burned media. FCAL and the CDROM is showing up. Tried a spare
SCSI DVD ROM i had around it recognized it too.
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Jerry Kemp
2017-09-19 23:03:42 UTC
Permalink
+1,

Even if you have to start out with 03/05 GA media, Its pretty easy to LU (live
upgrade) + convert over to ZFS.

Also, if your SS 5 the OP mentioned earlier is available, it can easily be set
up as a jumpstart server, even if it is just basic enough to get an OS installed.

Jerry
Post by William Enestvedt
If the OBP sees the hardware, then I would suspect the burned media. (Nothing
personal, honest: it has bitten me, too.)
If no one closer to you has official DVDs, I can probably send you one: I
think we got a ton of extra sets, years ago.
- Will
--
Will Enestvedt
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Carl R. Friend
2017-09-19 23:00:52 UTC
Permalink
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
Solaris 10 gives me an error that says short disk read the file just
loaded does not appear to be executable.
Solaris 9 does the same thing
You might have a wonky CD/ROM drive. Try it with another one.
They do occasionally go south. I've got one here that will only
work in one orientation which makes things "interesting" sometimes
(at least it's an external).

Cheers!
--
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | Boylston |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA |
| mailto:***@rcn.com +---------------------+
| http://users.rcn.com/crfriend/museum | ICBM: 42:20N 71:43W |
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Jonathan Patschke
2017-09-19 23:02:54 UTC
Permalink
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
Solaris 10 gives me an error that says short disk read the file just
loaded does not appear to be executable.
Solaris 9 does the same thing
Any ideas?
Are you back-rev on firmware? I vaguely remember getting this sort of
error along the way of upgrading my E3000 from 2.6 to 9.

Patch 103346-29 will get you OpenBoot 3.2 v29 and POST 3.9.29. I'm sure I
have that patch _somewhere_, but it's not in the places I normally keep
things like that.
--
Jonathan Patschke
Austin, TX
USA
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
PhreakShow Telephone Company
2017-09-19 23:04:57 UTC
Permalink
It has Solaris 9 on the internal drives. POST is 3.9.30
Post by Jonathan Patschke
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
Solaris 10 gives me an error that says short disk read the file just
loaded does not appear to be executable.
Solaris 9 does the same thing
Any ideas?
Are you back-rev on firmware? I vaguely remember getting this sort of
error along the way of upgrading my E3000 from 2.6 to 9.
Patch 103346-29 will get you OpenBoot 3.2 v29 and POST 3.9.29. I'm sure I
have that patch _somewhere_, but it's not in the places I normally keep
things like that.
--
Jonathan Patschke
Austin, TX
USA
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Dave McGuire
2017-09-19 23:08:36 UTC
Permalink
Really sounds like a fuktificated optical drive.

-Dave
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
It has Solaris 9 on the internal drives. POST is 3.9.30
Post by Jonathan Patschke
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
Solaris 10 gives me an error that says short disk read the file just
loaded does not appear to be executable.
Solaris 9 does the same thing
Any ideas?
Are you back-rev on firmware? I vaguely remember getting this sort of
error along the way of upgrading my E3000 from 2.6 to 9.
Patch 103346-29 will get you OpenBoot 3.2 v29 and POST 3.9.29. I'm sure I
have that patch _somewhere_, but it's not in the places I normally keep
things like that.
--
Jonathan Patschke
Austin, TX
USA
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
PhreakShow Telephone Company
2017-09-19 23:10:15 UTC
Permalink
i tried my SCSI DVD Drive on it too, same issues. Time to dig out my external
Post by Dave McGuire
Really sounds like a fuktificated optical drive.
-Dave
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
It has Solaris 9 on the internal drives. POST is 3.9.30
Post by Jonathan Patschke
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
Solaris 10 gives me an error that says short disk read the file just
loaded does not appear to be executable.
Solaris 9 does the same thing
Any ideas?
Are you back-rev on firmware? I vaguely remember getting this sort of
error along the way of upgrading my E3000 from 2.6 to 9.
Patch 103346-29 will get you OpenBoot 3.2 v29 and POST 3.9.29. I'm sure I
have that patch _somewhere_, but it's not in the places I normally keep
things like that.
--
Jonathan Patschke
Austin, TX
USA
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Jerry Kemp
2017-09-19 23:14:56 UTC
Permalink
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
i tried my SCSI DVD Drive on it too, same issues. Time to dig out my external
One final item for optical drive consideration, the 512 byte vs 2048 byte thing.

This is an actual SUMMARY post for a E3500 from 2009 from the SunManagers
mailing list.

In short, confirm that your optical drive is set to 512 byte block size.

Jerry


...............................

SUMMARY: booting E3500 from 10/09 Solaris 10 DVD

The solution was to apply patch 11164903, or a later version, to update the
Toshiba SD-M1401 DVD-ROM drive's firmware. I found 111649-04 and applied it.
After I completed this step I was able to boot the 10/09 Solaris 10 DVD
without issue.


Other suggestions:

Some of the Sun DVD drives (early SCSI) need the jumper on the drive to be
moved from 512byte to 2048byte setting to allow booting of DVDs.

Some of the Sun DVD drives prefer DVD+R media over DVD-R.


Many thanks to all who replied!
Jason
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
I have recently acquired an E3500 that is equipped with a DVD-ROM drive. I
can boot CDs but not DVDs. A U60 will boot the media fine from the same
DVD-ROM drive but no luck if I move the drive to the E3500.
Is the E3500 capable of booting DVDs?
Is the 10/09 Solaris 10 media available as CDs or will I have to create a
network boot server to install the OS?
thanks - I will summarize responses.
regards,
Jason
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
PhreakShow Telephone Company
2017-09-19 23:26:02 UTC
Permalink
I got her going its installing solaris 10 now :) Thanks again for all the help
Post by Jerry Kemp
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
i tried my SCSI DVD Drive on it too, same issues. Time to dig out my external
One final item for optical drive consideration, the 512 byte vs 2048 byte thing.
This is an actual SUMMARY post for a E3500 from 2009 from the SunManagers
mailing list.
In short, confirm that your optical drive is set to 512 byte block size.
Jerry
...............................
SUMMARY: booting E3500 from 10/09 Solaris 10 DVD
The solution was to apply patch 111649 03, or a later version, to update the
Toshiba SD-M1401 DVD-ROM drive's firmware. I found 111649-04 and applied it.
After I completed this step I was able to boot the 10/09 Solaris 10 DVD
without issue.
Some of the Sun DVD drives (early SCSI) need the jumper on the drive to be
moved from 512byte to 2048byte setting to allow booting of DVDs.
Some of the Sun DVD drives prefer DVD+R media over DVD-R.
Many thanks to all who replied!
Jason
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
I have recently acquired an E3500 that is equipped with a DVD-ROM drive.
I
can boot CDs but not DVDs. A U60 will boot the media fine from the same
DVD-ROM drive but no luck if I move the drive to the E3500.
Is the E3500 capable of booting DVDs?
Is the 10/09 Solaris 10 media available as CDs or will I have to create a
network boot server to install the OS?
thanks - I will summarize responses.
regards,
Jason
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Jerry Kemp
2017-09-19 23:29:26 UTC
Permalink
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
I got her going its installing solaris 10 now :) Thanks again for all the help
That's fine, and we are all happy you are moving forward.

But......after this email storm......you can't just stop there.

What was the fix action? What got the ball rolling again?

Jerry
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
PhreakShow Telephone Company
2017-09-19 23:41:38 UTC
Permalink
couple of bad CDRs and my SCSI DVD-ROM was toast. Grabbed an old pioneer SCSI
Post by Jerry Kemp
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
I got her going its installing solaris 10 now :) Thanks again for all the help
That's fine, and we are all happy you are moving forward.
But......after this email storm......you can't just stop there.
What was the fix action? What got the ball rolling again?
Jerry
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Jerry Kemp
2017-09-19 23:43:20 UTC
Permalink
Excellent, thanks for the update.

Glad you are able to enjoy your new computer.

Jerry
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
couple of bad CDRs and my SCSI DVD-ROM was toast. Grabbed an old pioneer SCSI
Post by Jerry Kemp
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
I got her going its installing solaris 10 now :) Thanks again for all the help
That's fine, and we are all happy you are moving forward.
But......after this email storm......you can't just stop there.
What was the fix action? What got the ball rolling again?
Jerry
___
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
PhreakShow Telephone Company
2017-09-19 23:46:55 UTC
Permalink
Heres a pic of it installing, sorry crappy camera
https://imgur.com/r64bYWv

I love sun stuff. I need to find more. x86 stuff to me is boring.
Post by Jerry Kemp
Excellent, thanks for the update.
Glad you are able to enjoy your new computer.
Jerry
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
couple of bad CDRs and my SCSI DVD-ROM was toast. Grabbed an old pioneer SCSI
Post by Jerry Kemp
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
I got her going its installing solaris 10 now :) Thanks again for all
the
help
That's fine, and we are all happy you are moving forward.
But......after this email storm......you can't just stop there.
What was the fix action? What got the ball rolling again?
Jerry
___
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
William Enestvedt
2017-09-19 23:48:51 UTC
Permalink
Nice terminal!!

- Will
--
Will Enestvedt
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
Heres a pic of it installing, sorry crappy camera
https://imgur.com/r64bYWv
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Dave McGuire
2017-09-19 23:56:55 UTC
Permalink
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
Heres a pic of it installing, sorry crappy camera
https://imgur.com/r64bYWv
Hey, a VT220! That's a decade or two too old for an E3500, but
that'll do just fine. :-) Very nice terminal.
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
I love sun stuff. I need to find more. x86 stuff to me is boring.
To you and everyone else. :-)

-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
PhreakShow Telephone Company
2017-09-19 23:58:24 UTC
Permalink
Yup yup. Igot a VT220 and a 420, The 420 was in storage. The 220
works great, Plus its small. Which i love
Post by Dave McGuire
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
Heres a pic of it installing, sorry crappy camera
https://imgur.com/r64bYWv
Hey, a VT220! That's a decade or two too old for an E3500, but
that'll do just fine. :-) Very nice terminal.
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
I love sun stuff. I need to find more. x86 stuff to me is boring.
To you and everyone else. :-)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Carl R. Friend
2017-09-19 23:49:50 UTC
Permalink
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
couple of bad CDRs and my SCSI DVD-ROM was toast. Grabbed an old pioneer SCSI
Welcome to the world of retro-computing. Sometimes it just
works, and sometimes it takes a heck of a lot of work to make
it work. I've got an SGI Indy here that's giving me fits at the
moment... (And, of course, no time to really work on it.)

Cheers!
--
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | Boylston |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA |
| mailto:***@rcn.com +---------------------+
| http://users.rcn.com/crfriend/museum | ICBM: 42:20N 71:43W |
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
PhreakShow Telephone Company
2017-09-19 23:55:18 UTC
Permalink
Oh i know, j I remember getting OpenStep going on my SS5, it was
moody, I got bored of x86 stuff so i got rid of most of it, Got this
to go along with my SS5, and its fun, something that actually makes
me think
Post by Carl R. Friend
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
couple of bad CDRs and my SCSI DVD-ROM was toast. Grabbed an old pioneer SCSI
Welcome to the world of retro-computing. Sometimes it just
works, and sometimes it takes a heck of a lot of work to make
it work. I've got an SGI Indy here that's giving me fits at the
moment... (And, of course, no time to really work on it.)
Cheers!
--
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | Boylston |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA |
| http://users.rcn.com/crfriend/museum | ICBM: 42:20N 71:43W |
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Andrew Liles
2017-09-19 23:55:46 UTC
Permalink
Post by Carl R. Friend
Welcome to the world of retro-computing. Sometimes it just
works, and sometimes it takes a heck of a lot of work to make
it work. I've got an SGI Indy here that's giving me fits at the
moment... (And, of course, no time to really work on it.)
Whatbs wrong with your Indy? Mine has been glitchy from the start. Not sure
if thatbs just the way they were, or whatb&
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Carl R. Friend
2017-09-20 00:13:34 UTC
Permalink
Post by Andrew Liles
Post by Carl R. Friend
I've got an SGI Indy here that's giving me fits at the
moment... (And, of course, no time to really work on it.)
Whatbs wrong with your Indy? Mine has been glitchy from the start. Not sure
if thatbs just the way they were, or whatb&
Normally, Indys are solid as rocks, and it's not unusual for my
mainline machines to happily run from from power-cut to power-cut, but
this one packed up a couple of weeks ago, sometimes won't even get
past the red light, and will sometimes boot then a few minutes later
gripe about uncorrectable ECC and die. I've reseated memory, swapped
banks, cleaned the contacts, and that's where it sits.

There's also the annoyance of a flat "N"VRAM battery (I want to
find the guy who came up with that and hurt him), but that's just
that -- an annoyance.

The worst part is, is that once the light goes red, the machine
stops watching the "power" button and I have to unplug the thing
from the mains.
--
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | Boylston |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA |
| mailto:***@rcn.com +---------------------+
| http://users.rcn.com/crfriend/museum | ICBM: 42:20N 71:43W |
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Andrew Liles
2017-09-20 00:27:55 UTC
Permalink
Post by Carl R. Friend
There's also the annoyance of a flat "N"VRAM battery (I want to
find the guy who came up with that and hurt him), but that's just
that -- an annoyance.
Yeah the NVRAMs are the worst - Ibve had maybe one machine that didnbt
have a dead one. I looked in the Sun service manual once and it claimed the
NVRAMs on most of the sun4c series were only rated for 3 yearsb& whose bright
idea was that???

My Indy has had problems with RAM, I tried to max it out to 256MB but it
wasnbt cooperating, it passed IDE diags and POSTed just fine but it locked
up while booting IRIX with that much RAM in it.

Otherwise it works OK but something is coupling noise into the speaker (which
for some ungodly reason is part of the power supply in this machine). Ibve
swapped PSUs and Ibve recapped another and it still does it - I have
basically another whole Indy worth of spare parts Ibve swapped around and it
makes this really faint barely audible sound when doing things like dragging
windows around the screen. Ibm guessing in the day the sound of the loud
SCSI HDs and buzzing CRTs that were bundled with these probably masked it -
but in a quiet room with a quiet modern HD and an LCD it is noticeable.

Also the graphics output seems noisy, at least on the LCDs Ibve plugged it
into. Might work better on a CRT if I had oneb&

My Indigo2 and my Octanes all work beautifully, though.

Still, worth having it for that beautiful blue case and the neat startup chime
alone.

-a.
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Carl R. Friend
2017-09-20 01:01:09 UTC
Permalink
Post by Andrew Liles
Yeah the NVRAMs are the worst - Ibve had maybe one machine that didnbt
have a dead one. I looked in the Sun service manual once and it claimed the
NVRAMs on most of the sun4c series were only rated for 3 yearsb& whose bright
idea was that???
Somebody Hell-bent on planned-obsolescence and who could never have
known that the chips would someday go unobtanium?
Post by Andrew Liles
My Indy has had problems with RAM, I tried to max it out to 256MB but it
wasnbt cooperating, it passed IDE diags and POSTed just fine but it locked
up while booting IRIX with that much RAM in it.
I'm not sure what's up with that, because I have two rather fat
Indys with 256MB (including one with a Presenter panel) that work
just fine. They may be overly sensitive to differences in access
speed and the ratings of the SIMMs.
Post by Andrew Liles
Otherwise it works OK but something is coupling noise into the speaker [...]
This may not be coupling but rather vibration of the parts of
the switching power supply itself. I have a DG NOVA 840 (vintage
1972) that I can tell how hard it's working by ear because the
switching supplies make different noises depending on how large
the load is -- and the harder a machine is working, the more
current it draws. How does the Indy sound when listening to the
line-level output?
Post by Andrew Liles
Also the graphics output seems noisy, at least on the LCDs Ibve plugged it
into. Might work better on a CRT if I had oneb&
See above. Try the line-level into an off-CPU amplifier and
see how it sounds. I've had one of my Indys as an integral part
of my stereo system for years and they sound great.
Post by Andrew Liles
My Indigo2 and my Octanes all work beautifully, though.
Beautiful systems both!
Post by Andrew Liles
Still, worth having it for that beautiful blue case and the neat
startup chime alone.
That startup chime is quite a shocker played through a high-
powered audio system in the morning when you forgot to properly
shut everything down the prior night!

Cheers!
--
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | Boylston |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA |
| mailto:***@rcn.com +---------------------+
| http://users.rcn.com/crfriend/museum | ICBM: 42:20N 71:43W |
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Andrew Liles
2017-09-20 01:05:54 UTC
Permalink
Post by Carl R. Friend
See above. Try the line-level into an off-CPU amplifier and
see how it sounds. I've had one of my Indys as an integral part
of my stereo system for years and they sound great.
Yeah, it is quiet as a mouse on the line-out. The only speakers I have in my
"vintage" area are a set of speakers intended for an Octane, though - but the
Indy doesn't supply the power for those (the Octane IP30 boards have an
onboard 10V 1/8" phono jack for powering outboard speakers) so they are kind
of useless on anything else.

-a.
_______________________________________________
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Toby Thain
2017-09-20 00:34:41 UTC
Permalink
...
B B There's also the annoyance of a flat "N"VRAM battery (I want to
find the guy who came up with that and hurt him), but that's just
that -- an annoyance.
It was a little more than an annoyance on my E450 -- it ceased to boot
when the NVRAM died. At least I hope that's all it is.

--Toby
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Carl R. Friend
2017-09-20 00:50:46 UTC
Permalink
Post by Toby Thain
...
B B There's also the annoyance of a flat "N"VRAM battery (I want to
find the guy who came up with that and hurt him), but that's just
that -- an annoyance.
It was a little more than an annoyance on my E450 -- it ceased to boot
when the NVRAM died. At least I hope that's all it is.
There would likely have been a way to put the stuff into it that
needed replacing before trying to boot the thing. That's what I have
to do with my operational Indys until I get around to doing the hack
involving cutting into the top of the "N"VRAM chip and soldering in
an external battery holder...

Was there no way to access the memory space and write to it?
--
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | Boylston |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA |
| mailto:***@rcn.com +---------------------+
| http://users.rcn.com/crfriend/museum | ICBM: 42:20N 71:43W |
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
_______________________________________________
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Andrew Liles
2017-09-20 00:56:13 UTC
Permalink
Post by Carl R. Friend
Was there no way to access the memory space and write to it?
It gets *really* annoying on sun4u models with OBP 4.x - they removed the
mkp/mkpl commands from the firmware so itbs not straightforward to program.
You can usually find the address by browsing the beepromb node in the
device tree, getting the physical address, then knowing the offset of the
ethernet/hostid parts (0x1FD8 bytes into the EEPROM on my Sun Blade 100). If
you can manage to get into Solaris, prtconf -vp will show the physical address
of the EEPROM too.

Then you can program with the c! command from Forth.

Not sure if that applies to E450 and its ilk.

-a.
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Carl R. Friend
2017-09-20 01:11:27 UTC
Permalink
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Andrew Liles
2017-09-20 01:26:45 UTC
Permalink
Post by Carl R. Friend
Well, that doth suck doesn't it. Time to get out the hacksaw,
utility knife, and a lot of patience because those are more likely
to be available than the original devices.
That brings up another issue entirely... Is there any reliable way to convert
the barcode on original Sun NVRAMs to Ethernet addresses/Host IDs? It seems
over the years that they used a couple different formats and I haven't seen
any comprehensive word on how to recover the factory address with the barcode
alone. One of my machines (Sun Blade 100) seems to have the full ethernet
address on the barcode, but all my sun4c/sun4m machines have 4-6 letter codes
on them.

I did find some guides that suggested that the code was Base32, then you
XOR'ed it with a constant and added/subtracted a value to get the hostid bits.
Since most of my machines have come to me with dead NVRAMs it's hard to know
if those methods are correct (maybe one or two came with original hard drives
with logs I was able to extract original ethernet addresses from).

-a.
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Toby Thain
2017-09-20 01:35:14 UTC
Permalink
Post by Toby Thain
...
B B B There's also the annoyance of a flat "N"VRAM battery (I want to
find the guy who came up with that and hurt him), but that's just
that -- an annoyance.
It was a little more than an annoyance on my E450 -- it ceased to boot
when the NVRAM died. At least I hope that's all it is.
B B There would likely have been a way to put the stuff into it that
needed replacing before trying to boot the thing.B That's what I have
to do with my operational Indys until I get around to doing the hack
I think this is not possible on the E450, but I forget the details of
the problem I had. I'll have to try again.

Thanks for the moral support...

--Toby
involving cutting into the top of the "N"VRAM chip and soldering in
an external battery holder...
B B Was there no way to access the memory space and write to it?
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Peter Stokes
2017-09-20 10:07:56 UTC
Permalink
Hi All

Thought I would update this thread which has moved onto the Sun NVRAMs, a
whole world of confusion given some are obsolete. I supply a lot both as
separate chips or on system/boards which normally have dead ones when
received.

First word of warning do not buy from China/Far East, usually crap/dead or
downright fraudulent product in my experience. Buy from distis such as
Mouser/GigiKey/Farnell if possible.

Sun4c - SS1, SS2 etc used M48T02, you can still get I think a version, BUT
with some OBP versions the clock gets reset during poweron, I have seen this
on SS2 and IPX, early SS2 OBP however seemed to work ok.

Sun4m - SS5, SS20 etc used M48T08 or M48T18, these are still available as
M48T08 which work in all applications.

Sun4u with OBP 3.X - Ultra 1, 2, 5, 10 etc (inc E450), these used M48T59, no
longer available, use M48T58 as alternative.

All the above can use the mkp, mkpl commands as per
http://www.menet.umn.edu/~bob/FAQ/sun-nvram-hostid.faq

Sun4u with OBP 4.X AND using NVRAM Blade 100, 150, V120 etc (not later EEPROM
such as Blade 1000 etc), these also used the M48t59 BUT the M48T58 will not
work, with these use the DS1553, though there is now limited availability on
it. The OBP 4.X does not have the mkp, mkpl commands, so the trick is to use a
3.X based system, I use an Ultra 5, setup the MAC and Hostid, then setup the
hardware type, normally to 83 using

83 1 mkp

Then recompute the checksum, again see above writeup. Then transfer it into
the 4.x machine. It often takes a while as diags will be enabled, but
eventually comes to the OBP screen.

What we do when the DS1553 have been exhausted, no idea yet!

Peter
---------------------------
Peter Stokes
Ashlyn Computer Services
Mbl: 07977 532320
---------------------------
Post by Toby Thain
Post by Toby Thain
...
B B B There's also the annoyance of a flat "N"VRAM battery (I want to
find the guy who came up with that and hurt him), but that's just
that -- an annoyance.
It was a little more than an annoyance on my E450 -- it ceased to boot
when the NVRAM died. At least I hope that's all it is.
B B There would likely have been a way to put the stuff into it that
needed replacing before trying to boot the thing.B That's what I have
to do with my operational Indys until I get around to doing the hack
I think this is not possible on the E450, but I forget the details of
the problem I had. I'll have to try again.
Thanks for the moral support...
--Toby
involving cutting into the top of the "N"VRAM chip and soldering in
an external battery holder...
B B Was there no way to access the memory space and write to it?
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Dave McGuire
2017-09-19 23:54:56 UTC
Permalink
Schweet. Great machine!

-Dave
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
couple of bad CDRs and my SCSI DVD-ROM was toast. Grabbed an old pioneer SCSI
Post by Jerry Kemp
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
I got her going its installing solaris 10 now :) Thanks again for all the help
That's fine, and we are all happy you are moving forward.
But......after this email storm......you can't just stop there.
What was the fix action? What got the ball rolling again?
Jerry
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--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
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William Enestvedt
2017-09-19 23:46:26 UTC
Permalink
It was the chicken, wan't it?

- Will
--
Will Enestvedt
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
I got her going its installing solaris 10 now :) Thanks again for all the help
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William Enestvedt
2017-09-20 00:12:32 UTC
Permalink
Depending on your preference, you may have enough drives to try out some
different applications on Sol8, Sol9, and Sol10...before deciding finally to
stay on 10. :7)

- Will
--
Will Enestvedt
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
I got her going its installing solaris 10 now :)
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John Hudak
2017-09-20 00:05:33 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dave McGuire
Post by Dave McGuire
Really sounds like a fuktificated optical drive.
^^^^^^^^^^^^ I need to add
this to my dictionary!!!!! quite descriptive!
Just for the record, a wonky drive is my suspicion. weak laser/bad
disk/sticking laser sled....
J
Post by Dave McGuire
Really sounds like a fuktificated optical drive.
-Dave
Post by Dave McGuire
It has Solaris 9 on the internal drives. POST is 3.9.30
Post by Jonathan Patschke
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
Solaris 10 gives me an error that says short disk read the file just
loaded does not appear to be executable.
Solaris 9 does the same thing
Any ideas?
Are you back-rev on firmware? I vaguely remember getting this sort of
error along the way of upgrading my E3000 from 2.6 to 9.
Patch 103346-29 will get you OpenBoot 3.2 v29 and POST 3.9.29. I'm
sure I
Post by Dave McGuire
Post by Jonathan Patschke
have that patch _somewhere_, but it's not in the places I normally keep
things like that.
--
Jonathan Patschke
Austin, TX
USA
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New Kensington, PA
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Steve Sandau
2017-09-20 00:19:16 UTC
Permalink
Post by John Hudak
Post by Dave McGuire
Really sounds like a fuktificated optical drive.
^^^^^^^^^^^^ I need to add
this to my dictionary!!!!! quite descriptive!
Just for the record, a wonky drive is my suspicion. weak laser/bad
disk/sticking laser sled....
I love learning new words.

Steve
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Dave McGuire
2017-09-19 23:07:45 UTC
Permalink
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
Solaris 10 gives me an error that says short disk read the file just
loaded does not appear to be executable.
Solaris 9 does the same thing
Any ideas?
Are you back-rev on firmware?B I vaguely remember getting this sort of
error along the way of upgrading my E3000 from 2.6 to 9.
Patch 103346-29 will get you OpenBoot 3.2 v29 and POST 3.9.29.B I'm sure I
have that patch _somewhere_, but it's not in the places I normally keep
things like that.
I have 103346-30 (OBP_3.2.30,POST_3.9.30) and have put it and its
readme file here:

http://www.neurotica.com/Solaris/Patches/103346-30.README
http://www.neurotica.com/Solaris/Patches/103346-30.tar.Z

-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
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Mike Spooner
2017-09-19 23:54:33 UTC
Permalink
Post by PhreakShow Telephone Company
Im kind of at a loss with this thing
Solaris 10 gives me an error that says short disk read the file just
loaded does not appear to be executable.
Solaris 9 does the same thing
Any ideas?
On older Solaris releases, "short read" errors can indicate trying to boot
off the wrong "soft partition"
of the CD/DVD. Not sure if that still applies to Solaris 10 ie: do the S10
DVDs still use a "pretend HDD" layout? If so, trying the following
alternative boot commands, one at a time, may help:

ok boot cdrom:a
ok boot cdrom:b
ok boot cdrom:c
ok boot cdrom:d
ok boot cdrom:e
ok boot cdrom:f
ok boot cdrom:g
ok boot cdrom:h

If that does not get you going, it would be worth checking that the NVRAM
settings (device-aliases etc) haven't been messed with by previous owner:
posting the output of the OpenBOOT "devalias" command to this list might be
useful.

The other thing to watch out for on the EXX00 systems is the DVD drive
itself - some of the Toshiba SCSI DVD drives shipped by Sun with the EXX00
systems are incapable of *booting* from DVD media more than 3.5Gb full,
allegedly due to firmware bugs in the drive. I can't remember which
specific Toshiba models were effected, but a net-search will probably
reveal it.

I too have had occasional problems with home-burned Solaris 9 and 10 DVD
discs (which I have not had with other Solarii, going all the way back to
the Solaris 2.2 CDs). Oddly, only the SPARC edition seems troublesome. Burn
at slowest speed your writer can manage (yes, 1X if possible), and use the
highest quality media you can reasonably afford, and if the first doesn't
fly, burn another one.

Best of luck,
-- Mike Spooner
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