[rescue] Sun Ultra 2 Creator has no video

[Mark M]

Something of note, there is an incompatibility between some revs of the ffb
and 300mhz cpus. I don’t know how it manifests though.

Do you have 300mhz us2s in it?

-mark

On Fri, Apr 12, 2024 at 16:57 Michael Dombrowski via rescue <
rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:

> 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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