[rescue] (Possibly) dead Elite-3D framebuffer

[Andrew Gaylard]

Hi all,

Last night, my old HP monitor (1994 vintage; one should never use the term
"old" to rescuers.  Sorry.) gave an arcing sound on power-up.  At the same
time, my Ultra-60 failed to power on.  It beeped, then nothing more.

Removing all the devices got me as far as the OpenPROM, where I proceeded
to run the diags.  All the tests passed.  I then put the framebuffer back in
and again all the tests passed, except for this:


[ ... four minutes of self-tests, all passed ...]

ttya initialized
SC Control: EWP:0 IAP:0 FATAL:0 WAKEUP:0 BXIR:0 BPOR:0 SXIR:0 SPOR:1 POR:0
Probing Memory Bank #0 128 128 128 128 : 512 Megabytes
Probing Memory Bank #1 128 128 128 128 : 512 Megabytes
Probing Memory Bank #2 128 128 128 128 : 512 Megabytes
Probing Memory Bank #3 128 128 128 128 : 512 Megabytes
Probing Floppy: No drives detected
Probing EBUS SUNW,CS4231
Probing UPA Slot at 1e,0 SUNW,afb AFB probe can't initialize device
Probing UPA Slot at 1d,0 Nothing there
Probing /pci at 1f,4000 at Device 1  pci108e,1000 network
Probing /pci at 1f,4000 at Device 3  scsi disk tape scsi disk tape
Probing /pci at 1f,4000 at Device 2  Nothing there
Probing /pci at 1f,4000 at Device 4  Nothing there
Probing /pci at 1f,4000 at Device 5  Nothing there
Probing /pci at 1f,2000 at Device 1  Nothing there

At this point the system hangs hard.  That "can't initialize device" looked
ominous.  Taking the card out again results in the box coming up as
normal, although my desktop is now a server, of c(o)urse.

So does this mean that my framebuffer is dead?

Has anyone experienced CRTs sending evil voltages back down the video
cables?  -- if it does turn out that this is what happened, it serves to confirm
all my prejudices against CRTs.

Or do these units die as a matter of course? -- in which case, I'll look at
getting a new one from Feebay; I see they're selling for anything from
$25 to $120.

Thanks,
Andrew