[rescue] Disappearing SCSI hard disks

[James Williams]

I've been having a rather serious problem with a previously-owned
SparcClassic I acquired a little over a week ago. I'm starting to think
something is amiss with the onboard SCSI controller, due to the fact that
when I try to access the CDROM drive (say, to install an operating system),
the system completely forgets about the internal HD until after a hard
reset.

Here's how my SCSI devices are set up:

ID 3: Internal 2GB HD (terminated; the jumpers pins to select it are
soldered together for some reason)
ID 6: External 2x Toshiba CDROM drive (non-terminated)

Here's what the boot process from CD looks like with Solaris 8, in case it
sheds any light on the matter:

---

SPARCclassic, No Keyboard
ROM Rev. 2.12, 64 MB memory installed, Serial #3435785.
Ethernet address 8:0:20:1f:ff:a, Host ID: 80346d09.



Type  help  for more information
ok probe-scsi
Target 3
  Unit 0   Disk     MICROP  4221-09 1128RFAVRFAV4221-09 1128RFAVRFAV
Target 6
  Unit 0   Removable Read Only device     TOSHIBA CD-ROM
XM-3301TA027201/27/92


ok boot cdrom
Boot device: /iommu/sbus/espdma at 4,8400000/esp at 4,8800000/sd at 6,0:d   File and
args
:
SunOS Release 5.8 Version Generic_108528-11 32-bit
Copyright 1983-2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Configuring /dev and /devices
Using RPC Bootparams for network configuration information.
le0: No carrier - cable disconnected or hub link test disabled?
le0: No carrier - cable disconnected or hub link test disabled?
Solaris Web Start 3.0 installer

The Solaris Installer can be run in English, or any of the following
languages:

 1) English                            6) Japanese
 2) German                             7) Korean
 3) Spanish                            8) Swedish
 4) French                             9) Simplified_Chinese
 5) Italian                           10) Traditional_Chinese
Select the language you want to use to run the installer: 1
English has been selected as the language in which to perform the install.
Starting the Web Start 3.0 Solaris installer
|
Solaris installer is searching the system's hard disks for a
location to place the Solaris installer software.

No Hard disks found on the system.
Please see your install documentation.

Exiting to shell
# Type  'go' to resume
ok probe-scsi
Target 6
  Unit 0   Removable Read Only device     TOSHIBA CD-ROM
XM-3301TA027201/27/92


ok

---

If I had to guess the cause, I'd say it's a termination issue, but I can't
seem to confirm this or isolate the offending device. The CD drive + housing
was taken from a system where it worked flawlessly and the HD is identical
to the one in that same system. As far as I can tell, jumper settings and
such between the two machines are the same; the only difference is that this
new machine has an SBus 10/100 ethernet card (which doesn't affect the
problem, as far as I can tell) and 16MB more memory. Here's a page with
jumper settings for the HD in this box, in case it helps:

http://www.mm.mtu.edu/drives/micropolis/new/4221AVConfig.html

The only jumpers I have set are ID0 and ID1, which sets the drive to SCSI ID
3.

Thanks in advance for any ideas or suggestions you might have.

-James R. Williams (jrwill at jrwill.com)