[Suns-at-Home] ultra-1 nvram question

[n2vip@verizon.net]

There is an NVRAM chip on the motherboard that holds the "identity" of your machine, including it's MAC address and the current Time Of Day clock. You can futz with the OpenBoot PROM commands to reset it each time it reboots, you can replace the chip and reprogram it, or you can very carefully add a new battery and continue to use the existing chip (which will still have to be reprogrammed)...

There are numerous sources for this information, useful google terms would be "sun nvram hack" - this info pre-dates the Ultra 1.

The problem is that the TOD/NVRAM chip contains a small battery, and that battery will run out.

If you'd like to replace your base OR upgrade to an Ultra 2, contact me off list - I have plenty and would be happy to ship you a replacement system...

Ken
 

>From: Arthur Wouk <awouk@nilenet.com>
>Date: 2007/03/17 Sat AM 11:16:05 CST
>To: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com
>Subject: [Suns-at-Home] ultra-1 nvram question

>my ultra-1 no longer keeps time when i remove power. however, when i boot, it
>still has the ethernet address properly listed in the boot banner, not the
>feared ff:ff:ff:ff.  so, is my battery dead, or is something else going on?
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