[rescue] sparc trouble (yet again)...

[David Holland]

Not being familiar w/ most of the SparcBooks, pardon me if this is a
little vague, but this is my 0.002$ (american, extra zero intentional)

Is there a 'test esp' command in the OBP?

There should at least be a test-all (or is it 'test all' - I forget -
sorry)

If there's a external SCSI port, and you have the drive/media available,
you could plug in a external CDROM, and try booting from it.   That
would at least narrow it down to SCSI controller vs. drive failure.

I'd also try listening very carefully to see if the drive is spinning
up.  You can (usually) hear the heads seeking when the drive gets up to
speed.

I'm guessing the drive died on you.  (Mebbe it overheated?)

I remember vague rumors of some of the sparcbooks using "regular" laptop
IDE drives w/ a IDE/SCSI translator board plugged into the back of them,
if your lucky, and its just the drive, IDE laptop drives aren't terribly
difficult to come by (at least here in the states)

David
 

On Mon, 2003-03-17 at 15:43, Frank Van Damme wrote:
> It must be nature's way of telling me I deserved it or something. 
> 
> I was happily typing in commands under linux on my sparcbook (rdi powerlite 
> 110) when I got a message like this on the console:
> 
> esp0: can't access device
> 
> or something similar. I don't remember the exact error phrase, but it came 
> down to it that I suddenly couldn't read the disk anymore. No kernel 
> panics/oopses, just this error. I turned took the laptop home and opened it 
> (I thought the hd might have lost connection to the board or something). I 
> took the harddisk out, it showed no signs of physical damage, neither does 
> the board. Booting of the hard disk is impossible: entering "boot disk" (my 
> standard way to use this hard disk) outputs:
> 
> Boot device: /iommu/sbus/espdma at 4,8400000/esp at 4,8800000/sd at 3,0
> 
> Can't open boot device
> 
> Hard disk makes no funny noises... 
> 
> Does someone know these symptoms? I can't run vi under the openboot prom... 
> And I' was/am so proud of my sparcbook annex collectors item   :'-(
> 
> -- 
> Frank Van Damme
> http://www.openstandaarden.be
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