[rescue] SS2 help

[linc]

On Fri, 8 Jun 2001, Joshua D. Boyd wrote:

> I just rescue a SS2.  It has 40megs of ram, 2 drives, reportedly no OS,
> and supposedly a TGX video card (has video card, haven't confirmed that
> its a TGX), and two small hard drives (an HP quantum drive, and a Seagate,
> not sure what the SCSI IDs are yet.).
>
> Anyway, I'm trying to boot this machine to serial.  I have a null modem
> connected between a lintel machine and serial port A on the SS2.
>
> After removing the video card, it boots to the OBP (with video card it
> only gets to "Can't open input device."). See after sig for the messages.
>
> Now, as I mentioned above, this machine was sold with no OS, but this
> error message sounds more like a bad hard drive or scsi controller than
> just no OS.
>
> I love these old unix machines, but I just never seem to be very good at
> getting/keeping them working correctly.

OK, Josh,
Looks like you have a nice little Sparcststion there.  First off, it
should boot to the serial terminal as long as the keyboard isn't plugged
in - framebuffer shouldn't matter at all.
At your open boot prompt, hit 'n' and enter to get into new command mode.
Once there do a 'probe-scsi' and that will show you what, if any, scsi
devices are hooked to your sparc and their id's.  Someone may have tossed
in a hard drive and never changed the boot command to get it to boot to
the right id..
Anyhow a 'help' at the new command mode prompt will give you a list of
options to use and help on how to use them.