[geeks] Netbooting a Sun IPC

[JP Hindin]

On Fri, 29 Mar 2013, Jonathan Katz wrote:

> Those only had 10baseT le0 device, right?

Correct, a 10bT le0 w/AUI connector.

> After setting the hostid and MAC does it take when you run banner?

After checking this, no - it isn't. I think I have a logic flaw in my
head, rather than something wrong with the machine. I have NOT replaced
the NVRAM, I was hoping that I could force the hostid/MAC in there on
power-on each time, but since it isn't sticking, I'm beginning to think
that it's trying to write this back to a dead NVRAM and that's why it's
not being retained. Now logic suggests to me once power is applied by the
system coming on, it should hold data until power cycle... but maybe this
is not how these work.

For reference, however, I'm running the following sequence:
setend diag-switch? false
1 0 mkp
52 1 mkp
8 2 mkp
0 3 mkp
20 4 mkp
c0 5 mkp
ff 6 mkp
ee 7 mkp
0 8 mkp
0 9 mkp
0 a mkp
0 b mkp
c0 c mkp
ff d mkp
ee e mkp
0 f 0 do i idprom@ xor loop f mkp


And then to verify a 'banner', or '.idprom', which shows settings still at
all ff's.

_Should_ this work, or will it simply not until I replace the NVRAM?

 - JP

>
> On Mar 29, 2013, at 6:57 PM, JP Hindin <jplist2008 at kiwigeek.com> wrote:
>
> > G'day;
> >
> > I pulled out a pair of IPCs that I picked up years ago and thought I'd see
> > if they functioned. Lo, they both fire up nicely - one has 24M of RAM, the
> > other 16M with a cgthree in one of the sbus slots. I get beautiful crisp
> > video on both, and can pop into openboot without issue.
> >
> > Alas, both have had their IDPROMs die, so on power on I get the MAC
> > address of ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff. I'd like to try and netboot them and chain
> > an install (possibly to local disk, possibly to an NFS mount, dunno yet)
> > but I'm having trouble getting them to talk to the network, presumably due
> > to the fried IDPROM.
> >
> > When I attempt to 'boot net' I get:
> > Boot device: /sbus/le at 0,c00000 File and args:
> > Internal loopback test  Did not receive expected loopback packet.
> > Cant open boot device
> >
> > I've set the 'diag-switch?' to false, which I thought would skip the
> > loopback test, but that doesn't seem to help. I've also followed the
> > instructions here (substituting the correct machine type of '52') to set a
> > MAC address:
> > http://www.squirrel.com/squirrel/sun-nvram-hostid.faq.html#GENERAL
> >
> > Still, the same 'internal loopback test'. Unfortunately I only have a
> > passing famaliarity with Suns (to my shame), so I'm not quite sure what to
> > try next.
> >
> > Could anyone offer any suggestions?
> >
> > Thanks!
> > - JP
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