[rescue] Sources of IRIX

[Carl R. Friend]

On 02/12/2017 12:06 PM, John Hudak wrote:
> Thank you.  Yep, got it...
>> The Dallas clock-chip which, among other things, is the NVRAM that
>> stores the Ethernet MAC address has a lithium battery in it which is
>> already well beyond its life-span
>
> Now I remember - I stayed clear of these things in my designs for that
> exact reason.
> The folks here have a reasonable work around and it looks straight forward
> http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?t=16723444
> The 080009 is the OUI for SGI.
>
> what is xx:yy:zz?

    The "xx:yy:zz" are the final three octets of the 48-bit MAC
address.  You can assign them anything you like (e.g. "c0:ff:ee")
but if you have licenses tied to the machine's MAC you need to get
those off the little serial-number label on the back and use those.

> If my machine does not have the ROM monitor, and I do the battery fix, is
> there a work around?

    You'd have to find the location in the "N"VRAM space and inject
the MAC using another machine or some device capable of driving
the (re-powered) Dallas chip.

    I "re-powered" a Sun clock-chip for a guy who wanted his old
SPARC machine restored last year and "did it the hard way" by taking
the top off the chip where the battery was, extracting the old battery,
and wiring in a battery-holder to put a CR2032 in to keep contents
sane when the machine was powered off.  The old one *in* the chip
looked very much dimensionally like a CR1220.  Expect to make a mess
if you do things this way.

    I have a couple of Sun machines myself that need this treatment.
I am not looking forward to it...  There's an entire Sun-based FAQ
on the tactic right down to all the gory details.  Find a copy, print
it out, and put the copy someplace where it can be found when you need
to perform the operation.

    Cheers!

-- 
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | Boylston            |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:crfriend at rcn.com                        +---------------------+
| http://users.rcn.com/crfriend/museum           | ICBM: 42:20N 71:43W |
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+