Bringing a Sunfire v240 back to life

Julián Nuñez

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Oct 15, 2020, 6:34:31 PM10/15/20

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Hi all, my name is Julian. I grew up as a PC user but bought a v240 off ebay just to play with it. Always been curious about SPARC and want to try to bring this one back to play with it.

Unfortunately I'm stuck.

This is a Sunfire v240 with no hard drive, no cd drive and no SCC card.

I am able to connect to the Serial Management port using a cable and I can get to the sc> prompt, and this is where the trouble starts:

sc> showfru

sc> showenvironment
No environmental devices present

showlogs -v shows a message saying something about bad pinout in seemprom 0xa8, can't determine system type. (I can get the full logs if needed).

When I try to do any other command (console, bootmode, etc) it says the command was ignored because the admin password is not set and asks me for one. Then the same thing happens (like if the password was not saved).

Any ideas?

Thanks and take care,
Julian.

Scott

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Oct 16, 2020, 12:16:26 AM10/16/20

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I think you're looking for:
sc> poweron
sc> console
For hardware issues you might have more luck posting to comp.sys.sun.hardware for now.

In any case, the V240 were solid and long-lived. I don't think
you'll get far without an SCC card. That has its MAC addresses
on it.
The service manual: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19088-01/v240.srvr/819-4207-10/819-4207-10.pdf
ALOM admin guide: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19088-01/v240.srvr/819-2445-11/index.html
Other docs: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19088-01/v240.srvr/index.html

Regards, Scott

Julián Nuñez

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Oct 16, 2020, 12:35:14 AM10/16/20

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On Friday, October 16, 2020 at 12:16:26 AM UTC-4, Scott wrote:
> On Thursday, October 15, 2020 at 3:34:31 PM UTC-7, Julián Nuñez wrote:
> > sc> showfru
> >
> > sc> showenvironment
> > No environmental devices present
> >
> > showlogs -v shows a message saying something about bad pinout in seemprom 0xa8, can't determine system type. (I can get the full logs if needed).
> >
> > When I try to do any other command (console, bootmode, etc) it says the command was ignored because the admin password is not set and asks me for one. Then the same thing happens (like if the password was not saved).
> >
> > Any ideas?
> >
> > Thanks and take care,
> > Julian.
> I think you're looking for:
> sc> poweron
> sc> console

When I try
sc> console

I just get a message saying to press #. to return to ALOM. No other messages.

when I try

sc> poweron

It says poweron is disabled because no SCC card is present.

> For hardware issues you might have more luck posting to comp.sys.sun.hardware for now.
>

I didn't know that existed, will definitely try there as well, thank you.

> In any case, the V240 were solid and long-lived. I don't think
> you'll get far without an SCC card. That has its MAC addresses
> on it.

I am getting an SCC card this weekend so hopefully this will help. However those messages about the seeprom and the empty 'showfru' have me concerned.

Basically what I'm trying to do is get to the ok> prompt to be able to boot from the CD IDE (that I'm getting this weekend as well).
No luck getting the ok> prompt however.

Viktor Madarasz

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Jun 14, 2021, 2:10:17 AM6/14/21

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Hi

did You manage to sort this out eventually ( with the SCC Card and CDROM
IDE?

Regards

Viktor