[rescue] Netra NFS/Enterprise 150 question

[Carl R. Friend]

    On Fri, 6 Feb 2009, Mike Hebel wrote:

> Good luck getting that [E-150 temperature sensor] to work
> right.  I took mine apart like a madman and cleaned it all
> to hell and it still never read right.

    Well. in this case, it seemed to be reading more or less
accurately until a power-cut this afternoon, and once the
power came back it read 41C with a big nasty flashing "X"
through the picture of the server on the screen, and the
amber "service" light lit up.  After I scooped a large
accumulation of "fur" from the grilles on the back of the
machine and blew out the screens on the bottom, it started
to slowly drop; I went home when it said 36 (it may be
lower now, but I can't read it remotely).

> But then I never did find an actual sensor so I think it's
> on the LCD board itself or on the motherboard.

    That's certainly a possibility, but a rather nonsensical
place to put a functional -- and meaningful -- sensor.

    On reading the sensor remotely: I know that in the machine's
original configuration the buttons on the panel could be read by
the install of Solaris 2.5.1 (in the Netra NFS load) and the
display manipulated.  I have reason to believe this was done
using a kernel module.

    Now, as this is a functional machine (i.e. not a "museum piece"),
  it runs Solaris 8, and it does so in 64-bit mode, and has disks
attached to it that were of unimaginable size when 2.5.1 was in
front-line use (it's mostly full of 36 Go drives in RAID-5); somehow
I think that if I try to load a 32-bit Solaris 2.5.1 driver into that
mix I'm seeking disaster.  So, how might it be possible to gain access
to the display panel?  Note that this is not terribly high on the
overall priority list, but part of me dislikes not having access into
the corners of my machines.

    Cheers!

+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:crfriend at rcn.com                        +---------------------+
| http://users.rcn.com/crfriend/museum           | ICBM: 42:22N 71:47W |
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