Re: Serial console on IPX (Was: Sparc serial port pinout?)
Okay, following reccomendations and my own best guessing I went out and purchased a 'Mac to serial printer' cable and a null-modem adapter. I plug the cables in, fire up minicom on the Lintel (set to 9600N81 as I remember seeing in the IPX firmware), and turn on the IPX. Power comes on, the drive spins up, but I get nothing. Now, what comes to mind is: Wrong cabling. Wrong serial port settings on the Lintel. Bad serial ports on the IPX. IPX not using serial console. The null-modem adapter is a standard Laplink-comatible cable. The mac cable is a Fellowes part # 99519 (no idea about the pinout on it) I have no 'normal' console on the IPX so I can't change settings unless I get serial console working at this point. If I can rule out the serial cabling I'll probably go ahead and get the keyboard and video adapters instead. Oh yeah, I assume the serial cable should go in port 'A', but I tried it in 'B' anyway and didn't get anything there either. On Fri, 5 Nov 1999, Will Lowe wrote: One more question. If it doesn't have a keyboard and monitor plugged in, will it put the console out the serial port automagically? It should. I know Suns do that automagically, and I know solaris does, and I know Debian is supposed to, but I haven't tried it yet, so I can't say for certain under Debian. yes, this works. It's a sun hardware thing, rather than a software issue, methinks.
Re: Serial console on IPX (Was: Sparc serial port pinout?)
Can a sysadmin friend take you into his jobsite some weekend? You don't necessarily need full-time access to monitor/keyboard/mouse, just long enough to be sure you're set up well enough to do further work headless. Also, having at least part-time access to a head makes recompiling kernels, etc., FAR less painful. (Believe me, I know!) --Walter [EMAIL PROTECTED]*** Walter Keeler * If my words did glow...* San Francisco, CA *** On Sat, 6 Nov 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, 6 Nov 1999, Walter Keeler wrote: Here's a basic question: What happens when you unplug the serial cable and then power up the IPX? Does it spin up and make disk access noises? Unplugged cable, powered on IPX. Disk spins up. If so, it sure sounds like a cabling issue of some sort. It would make the debugging job a whole lot easier to fire up the IPX with a head, if only to make sure it runs properly to begin with. Adding a head would put me back about $150 unless I could find a less expensive supplier for the keyboard and video converters, and then I wouldn't need serial console. Maybe that would be a better track? Sun sells a ps2 keyboard and mouse converter for $75, and Blackbox has a 13W3/VGA converter for about $45. I would love a head on this thing if it wouldn't be quite so expensive. Oh, and I have no desk/counter/shelf space for a second keyboard and mouse at this time. However, I did finally chase up a pinout for the serial port, and I might have ended up with either the wrong cable (might need a modem cable instead of a printer cable) or I might need a straight instead of a null modem cable. Unfortunately I wont be able to test any of those for the next two or three days. -- Ferret no baka
Re: Serial console on IPX (Was: Sparc serial port pinout?)
I don't know of anyone at all in the town I live in who would have the right equipment. I had access to a hard at the CMU campus at the time that I picked up the machine. I live in a fairly small town, and the closest city is about 75 miles away. So, unless I can actually scare up a temporary head locally (perhaps at one of the local ISPs) 'borrowing' a head will not be an option. On Sat, 6 Nov 1999, Walter Keeler wrote: Can a sysadmin friend take you into his jobsite some weekend? You don't necessarily need full-time access to monitor/keyboard/mouse, just long enough to be sure you're set up well enough to do further work headless. Also, having at least part-time access to a head makes recompiling kernels, etc., FAR less painful. (Believe me, I know!) On Sat, 6 Nov 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, 6 Nov 1999, Walter Keeler wrote: Here's a basic question: What happens when you unplug the serial cable and then power up the IPX? Does it spin up and make disk access noises? Unplugged cable, powered on IPX. Disk spins up. If so, it sure sounds like a cabling issue of some sort. It would make the debugging job a whole lot easier to fire up the IPX with a head, if only to make sure it runs properly to begin with. Adding a head would put me back about $150 unless I could find a less expensive supplier for the keyboard and video converters, and then I wouldn't need serial console. Maybe that would be a better track? Sun sells a ps2 keyboard and mouse converter for $75, and Blackbox has a 13W3/VGA converter for about $45. I would love a head on this thing if it wouldn't be quite so expensive. Oh, and I have no desk/counter/shelf space for a second keyboard and mouse at this time. However, I did finally chase up a pinout for the serial port, and I might have ended up with either the wrong cable (might need a modem cable instead of a printer cable) or I might need a straight instead of a null modem cable. Unfortunately I wont be able to test any of those for the next two or three days.
Re: Serial console on IPX (Was: Sparc serial port pinout?)
Okay, following reccomendations and my own best guessing I went out and purchased a 'Mac to serial printer' cable and a null-modem adapter. Ooh, that sounds like a bad combo to me. A null modem should twist the send and receive lines so that the send from one machine goes to the receive of the other. If your Mac cable is designed to go to a printer with a standard RS232 port, then it probably already does that twist, and attaching another null modem adapter to it does a double twist, putting you back with send going to send, and receive going to receive. That's a combination that's guaranteed to fail. The simplest way to make sure you have the right cabling is to make your own cables! Eric
Re: Serial console on IPX (Was: Sparc serial port pinout?)
On Sun, 7 Nov 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Okay, following reccomendations and my own best guessing I went out and purchased a 'Mac to serial printer' cable and a null-modem adapter. Ooh, that sounds like a bad combo to me. A null modem should twist the send and receive lines so that the send from one machine goes to the receive of the other. If your Mac cable is designed to go to a printer with a standard RS232 port, then it probably already does that twist, and attaching another null modem adapter to it does a double twist, putting you back with send going to send, and receive going to receive. That's a combination that's guaranteed to fail. I'll try a straight-through as soon as I can get one. Either that or I'll move the IPX closer to the Lintel and just use a sex changer. The simplest way to make sure you have the right cabling is to make your own cables! I have a tendency to mess up my own cables, alas. :/
Bad PROM
hi, I have got a nice SS10 with 2 processor but the PROM is invalid. I can boot boot SunOS but Linux don't want :( linux/arch/sparc/init.c:prom_init() The kernel could'nt get the PROM version and halt. Is there somebody who can compile a kernel for a Debian rescue disk with this patch applied ? --- init.c.orig Sun Nov 7 20:07:04 1999 +++ init.c Sun Nov 7 20:08:41 1999 @@ -67,7 +67,8 @@ default: prom_printf(PROMLIB: Bad PROM version %d\n, romvec-pv_romvers); - prom_halt(); + prom_vers = PROM_V3; + //prom_halt(); break; }; thanks arrrg $100 for a PROM in France ... :(( -- Fabien Seisen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://seisen.linuxfr.org [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Installing on a SparcServer 1000E
I dunno about your problem getting it to work, but the SparcServers 1000 and 1000E have a Y2K problem. Requires PROM 2.31 or later.. It can be fixed but it requires a call to Sun.. Dunno how difficult that is to get. Tony I just got a hand-me-down SparcServer 1000E (sun4d) that I was trying to install linux on. I can't seem to make it happen. Every time I try to install (many different ways), I get an error that pops me back out to the PROM, unless I try to net boot from the slink 2.1.1 tftpboot image. Then it claims that it is Loading Linux and appears to hang forever. I can't even send a break to get to the PROM. I have to power cycle it (the fact that I've done this would seem to imply that I have no proof that it hangs ``forever'', but it would seem to.) The other times, it gets to different points before telling me that there has been an ``Illegal Access Exception'' or something like that (I'm currently not in front of it, and it's busy hanging forever). I see some implications in the mailing list archives that it has been successfully installed on this architecture. Let me give you some specifics. I think it has 4 CPUs (2 each on two boards), the I/O/CPU boards on which they sit, and 288MB RAM. There was some sort of SBUS fiber channel card attaching it to a sparc storage array, but I removed it, thinking that it might be causing the problem. It didn't fix it, but I didn't put it back. I'd really appreciate it if anyone could help me out here. Solaris would just be so boring to put on it. -Bitt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Installing on a SparcServer 1000E
Tony Scarpino wrote: I dunno about your problem getting it to work, but the SparcServers 1000 and 1000E have a Y2K problem. Requires PROM 2.31 or later.. It can be fixed but it requires a call to Sun.. Dunno how difficult that is to get. i have 18 of the 2.31 prom update kits. if anyone needs them... the ONLY Y2K bug in the sc2000/SS1000 is in the PROM functions, it DOESNT affect the OS
