[rescue] Sun Ultra 2 Creator has no video

[Michael Dombrowski]

 If the monitor/cable works with the CG6, and you have no output from the Creator, then it sounds like a Creator problem. I recently played around with Creator cards on my U1, U2, and U60 and didn't have to do any configuration to get them to work. 

I would try updating the OpenBoot firmware as it is free and relatively easy, then getting a new Creator to try it out. 

mike

    On Friday, April 12, 2024 at 02:46:30 PM CDT, Seth Morabito via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:  
 
 Hello all,

I was recently given a Sun Ultra 2 with a UPA Creator ffb framebuffer. I'm getting no video out, I'm afraid, and I'm trying to diagnose what's going on. Some things I've observed:

- The Ultra 2 has 2 200MHz CPUs, 768MB RAM, and is running OBP 3.11. All diagnostics pass. The NVRAM was dead of course, but I've hacked on a CR2032 battery and reset the original host ID and Ethernet address.

- I'm using a DELL P1914S LCD monitor that is confirmed to work very well with a SPARCstation 2, an SGI Indy, and an SGI Indigo2 (and pretty much anything else I've thrown at it)

- I'm using a 13W3 to VGA cable with 12 jumpers that allow you to use it with various systems. Sun is one of the supported configurations, and the same cable works on my SPARCstation 2 with a CG6 SBus card. I've also tried a handful of other 13W3 to VGA converters I have lying around, with no success.

- The system definitely sees that the Creator is present on the UPA bus, and has no errors when scanning the bus.

- When booted with a serial terminal on ttya and without a keyboard attached, I can run the ffb diagnostics with "setenv diag-swtich? true" followed by "test screen", and the diagnostics pass without error.

- When I remove the UPA Creator and drop in an SBus CG6, I *do* get video out of the CG6.

- I got desperate and probed all of the pins on the Creator's 13W3 connector (without a monitor attached) and there's no signal on ANY pin, including the RGB coax connectors. No sync signals, nothing.

I'm left wondering if this is a cabling problem, a monitor problem, or a card problem, and I don't know what to try next.

Any advice would be welcomed!

-Seth
-- 
  Seth Morabito * Poulsbo, WA * https://loomcom.com/

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