[Suns-at-Home] Re: SunBlade 2500 questions

[Paul Keusemann]

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 01:25:18AM +1100, Andre van Eyssen wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Mar 2009, Paul Keusemann wrote:
> 
> >I've just acquired a SunBlade 2500 and am trying to figure out if it is
> >functional or not.  It has an XVR-600 graphics adapter and I don't have
> >an HDMI cable yet, so I'm trying to work via the serial console.  There
> 
> That's a DVI cable that you need. HDMI is something different.

Yep, wrong acronym. :-)

> 
> >is no keyboard connected which should force the startup output to ttya.
> >When I push the power button, the fans and the disk spin up but that's
> >it.  No beep, no output on either serial port.  Another thing that seems
> >odd, I've hooked up the serial port to a DataTracker and the lights do
> >not look right.  I've got a known good cable (it works with my SunBlade
> >150) but when I power on the SB-2500, RTS, CTS pins never go red like
> >they do on the SB-150.
> 
> Try stop-N during boot to force diagnostics. Reseat the CPUs - don't 
> forget to use the torque wrench supplied to tighten them (but not to 
> loosen them - it tends to bend the torque tool). Pull the framebuffer for 
> good luck.
> 

Torque wrench?  This is a 2500 with a socketed CPU.  I was hesitent to
mess with it, but at this point I figured it's either dead already or
this might fix it, so I pulled it and reseated it.  Then I yanked the 
frame buffer and hit the power switch and waddya know, I got a beep.
Put the frame buffer back in and it still works.  It took me a little
more fiddling with the breakout box to get the console connection
working both ways but it seems to be working now.  Now I've got to see
if I can get an O/S installed on it.

> >So, the first question is, should I be able to get this thing to boot
> >on the serial console without a keyboard attached?
> 
> Yes, but who knows how the serial port has been misconfigured by the prior 
> owner?
> 

Not much thankfully.

Thanks for the help/push Andre.

Paul
> -- 
> Andre van Eyssen.
> mail: andre@purplecow.org          jabber: andre@interact.purplecow.org
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> 

-- 
Paul Keusemann			                               pkeusem@visi.com
4266 Joppa Court		                               (952) 894-7805
Savage, MN  55378