[rescue] Motorola Powerstack

[Jochen Kunz]

On 2003.08.05 19:32 Meelis Roos wrote:

> I rescued a Motorola Powerstack computer. Seems to be a nice machine:
[...]
Looks like the "Motorola PowerStack II UTAH Pro4000". I have three of
this machines. You can run WinNT 4, AIX 4.x, VxWorks and Linux on it. I
am currently on the way porting NetBSD to it. They are quite nice
machines. The SCSI adapter is a NCR/Symbios 53C825 FastWide SCSI chip.
There is an IDE adapter in the PCI-ISA bridge. The Firmware hids it, but
once an OS is loaded it is useable. You need to solder the two 40 pin
IDC connectors to the mainbard and if you want to run Linux on it you
need a one line kernel patch to make the IDE adapter useable.

> So far, so good. The only problem is that there seem to be two
> passwords in the BIOS - novice and admin. Both are set and both
> are unknown.
1. Do not pull the the battery from the NVRAM!
2. Do a network boot setup and boot this file:
--- schnipp ---
\
printenv
setenv security-mode none
setenv security? false
--- schnapp ---

myhexdump /tftpboot/test.forth
000000 5C 20 0A 70 72 69 6E 74 65 6E 76 0A 73 65 74 65  \ .printenv.sete
000010 6E 76 20 73 65 63 75 72 69 74 79 2D 6D 6F 64 65  nv security-mode
000020 20 6E 6F 6E 65 0A 73 65 74 65 6E 76 20 73 65 63   none.setenv sec
000030 75 72 69 74 79 3F 20 66 61 6C 73 65 0A           urity? false.

Attention: There is a space after the "\". This space is important. The
machine does the usual dhcp/bootp and tftp thing. Just boot this Forth
code via tftp and the password is gone. I have done this successful with
about 15 PowerStack II machines.

> And yes, it looks more like a BIOS than a PROM :) - its colorful
> and graphic and has menus and icons and can use ps2 mouse etc...:)
Once you have NULLed the passords go to the admin menu and choose
command prompt. Then you will get to the OpenFirmWare Forth promt. Enter
"setenv menu? false" and the machine won't bother you with the "BIUOS"
any more.
--


tsch|_,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/