[rescue] Couple of questions from a SPARC newbie

[Bill Vinson]

On Saturday, March 16, 2002, at 10:53 AM, George Adkins wrote:

> Okay, a couple of things here...
>
> The manufacturer has changed their product recently, meaningg that the 
> new
> NVRAMS now make older Sun4C boxes barf, even when the IDPROM checksum 
> is set
> correctly.
>
> The following instructions will get them working properly, I have 
> several
> machines using these, and they all work fine with a little tweak.  Once 
> you
> have programmed all the information into the PROM as the NVRAM FAQ 
> instructs
> you to, you reset the machine, and it tries to come up, and barfs with 
> an
> IDPROM Checksum Invalid.  Next, use the following lines to program the
> NVRAMRC like this:
>
> nvedit <enter>
> probe-all <enter>
> install-console <enter>
> banner <enter>
> boot <enter>
> <ctrl-c>
> nvstore
> setenv use-nvramrc? true
>
> Then reset.  It should work just fine now.  If you goof up the NVRAMRC, 
> you
> can set-default nvramrc (IIRC) to clear it.  This string of commands 
> walks
> the machine through what is effectively a soft-reset so that it comes up
> correctly.

Did you get yours from Mouser?  I was looking at picking up this one:

511-M48T0220PC1	
STM STATIC RAMS 2kx8 timekeep 200ns	M48T02-200PC1

$12.80 doesn't seem so bad (Not sure what shipping is yet, but shouldn't 
be much) and this means I can play with the old one and try and solder a 
battery to it in the future.

>
>> One thing the NVRAM FAQ didn't say or I didn't see (now that I have
>> found it) is what to do if you don't have any info as the NVRAM was 
>> dead
>> before I got it.  I know I could fake a host id and mac address but is
>> there any other way to know what the system was set as?
>>
> look again, something about 8:0:20:c0:ff:ee....

Found it, thanks...

Right now, I am just trying to avoid putting too much money into the 
system if it has serious problems.  I have made some OpenBSD 3.0 boot 
floppies, but so far everyone I have tried gives me a "short read" 
error.  I think that means the sparc's floppy may be dying or every disk 
I have tried is bad?	  Also, as I don't have a AUI to UTP transceiver 
yet I can't test the network.  Mostly, I am trying to get to the point 
where I can see if the system will boot and use the harddrive.  Then at 
least I know it is working and can start investigating what else to do :)

Thanks again for all the great info,
Bill