[SunRescue] Off Topic: Rescuing my Sun

[Ken Hansen]

A hard learned lesson from years in tech support:

The answer is seldom in the clues provided from the caller - they are
usually not looking at the right things. The caller is not
stupid/dumb/whatever, they just don't know to look for the right piece of
information.

Like me and the stupid 2 Gig root partition problem earlier today. I knew
that, but I never questioned the logic of a 3 gig root partition on a 4.3
gig drive...

My best advice is to go back to square one and hook up a serial terminal. If
one is not available, a framebuffer will do nicely (you already have the
keyboard).

If that does not shed any light on the problem, consider all the parts that
could have failed dramatically by being on the shelf. Were they plugged into
the wall? Could they have gotten a voltage spike? Could NVRAM die? Could
memory be in the wrong places (no memory = no boot)? Drives die?

Have you looked into the service manaul for the units in question?

And finally, the $64K question - "How hard are you going to work to get a
Sun4c system up?" What would it mean if they never booted again???

HTH,

Ken
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gregory Leblanc" <gleblanc at cu-portland.edu>
To: <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2001 1:31 AM
Subject: [SunRescue] Off Topic: Rescuing my Sun


> I couldn't resist, sorry.  :)  Anyway, I've got a pair of SPARCstation
> 2's sittin here next to me, both of which are being a royal PITA.  I
> took the frame buffers out of them a few months ago, and told them to
> ust ttya for input and output.  They were working when I shut them down,
> but now they seem to be dead.  I plugged in a keyboard, and it beeps,
> and runs through some blinken lights, but I never get any output on the
> serial console.  Here's what the leds do...
>
> all lights flash at power on
> all lights blink on
> caps is on, the other three lights cycle 5 times
> caps blinks off, scroll blinks on
> caps is on, other three lights cycle 3 times
> then all of them blink on, then off, then blink on again, and then
> they're done blinking
>
> Anybody know what those mean, or have any ideas for things to try?
> Thanks,
> Greg
>
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