[SPARCbook] RE: 3000XT PCMCIA cdrom problem

[Jason King]

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason King [mailto:linuxguru at stny.rr.com]
Sent: Saturday, November 10, 2001 10:26 AM
To: Jason King
Subject: RE: 3000XT PCMCIA cdrom problem


Peter,

>	How did you do that without cdrom. I did the same with my last "new"
> used workstation
> but then i booted from the install cd stopped the isntallation to root
> shell and edited
> the shadow file. Solaris was most helpful with this "hack' even the
> graphical textedit was included with the installation root shell. No vi
> - no pain ;-)


 I was able to do it without cdrom by trying obvious easy to remember names
from the origin of the machine.   What's wrong with good ol' VI? ;)

> Did your "Release notes" mention anything about any Wavelan wireless
> cards being supported?

 No, looked through it again but see nothing mentioning "Wavelan" or
"wireless"  Also have the SparcBook User   Guide (was nice to get manuals &
cables).


> Can it have anything to do with that 512byte sector thing for booting
> older Solaris CDs
> (see the CD faq) On my plextor there is a jumper to change between 2048
> and 512 byte
> sectors (or wahtever the other sizes are the important thing is it needs
> to be 512 for booting Solaris).The Plextor works fine in the SB BTW.

> If the cdrom is supported by Sparcbook on Soalaris 2.6 I imagine it must
> have this option if you
> can figure out how to change it. If the drive was previously used on a
> pc it should be set the other way though.

> I guess you have determined the SCSI is working by probe-scsi at the
> open boot prompt. So you
> know the drive is attached ok. And termination you have checked 25 times
> I guess :-)

> Just a thought..
> Peter

There is noway to change sectors with this cdrom.  It is a PCMCIA Panasonc
KXL-D740 which is "mentioned" in the orignal "SPARCbook 3 and 3000, Release
Notes" pamplet that I received with the sparcbook.  The sparcbook did NOT
come with any cdrom or floppy, I just knew of a source where I could get the
exact model they made mention of in this pamphlet.  The drive itself DOES
allow you to change SCSI ID and termination being that it is a SCSI cdrom,
connected through the special PCMCIA adapter card that originally came with
the cdrom drive.  I do know that the drive works on a PC notebook, only
having problems with the IBM ThinkPads.

Yes I have tried probe-scsi also.  I have also done the "setenv diag-switch?
true" then "test scsi" which showed all tests succeeded finishing with "
setenv diag-switch? false".  This was all done with
Pause A" @ system memeory init. and a "Pause R" after playing with the
cdrom, not booting, then trying something new.  The pamplet I was talking
about mentions to change the spin time with "cd disk", ": cd-fixup spin-up
my-unit nip 6 = if d# 5000 ms then ;", "patch cd-fixup spin-up open",
"unselect-dev", and finally "boot cdrom".  I got nothing except the "can't
open boot device" again.  I also tried "Pause  N" and cleared the NVRAM
settings just in case they needed to be set back to default.  Next I tried
the 2nd part solution from the pamplet with said: "nvedit", "0: 4
probe-slot", "1: cd disk", "2: : cd-fixup spin-up my-unit nip 6 = if d# 5000
ms then ;", "3: patch cd-fixup spin-up open", "4: unselect-dev", "5:<CTRL
C>", "nvstore", "setenv sbus-probe-list 0123", "setenv use-nvramc? true",
"reset"....then "Pause A", "boot cdrom" and still got "can't open boot
device".  I did a install from the SUN OS cd's on a ultra 5 so know the
install cd is fine.  The last thing I guess I should mention is the OpenBoot
ROM version is 2.15 V1.06-F .

I also of course tried multiple times shutting the machine off, trying
different scsi id's, trying different PCMCIA slots, and booting up and
seeing if I could mount the drive from a terminal.  I tried to list all
devices and checked under /dev/dsk (can't remember exact syntax as I took it
off the screen of another machine that had someones post saying to try this
"listing") but still didn't see what was expected.  Thanks, hope going a
little more in depth to what I have tried will help.

Jason

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason King [mailto:linuxguru at stny.rr.com]
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 11:49 PM
To: sparcbook at sunhelp.org
Subject: 3000XT PCMCIA cdrom problem


I hope someone will throw a new bone for me to try with this problem being I
have manually looked through almost all posting's to this list from end to
start (1997? wow).  I am can't seem to get my sparcbook to see a Panasonic
KXL-D740 pcmcia cdrom.  I bought the machine from a "pc" shop (as is) and
promised that if I ever got passed the password then I would wipe the
machine.  25 minutes out of the shipping box (20 to warm up) and the
password was changed.  *Note* only set root password the same as host name
if you are a open and diverse person or security is not a problem you worry
about.
	Next step, I obtained the working cdrom drive as the machine did not come
with one.  The machine came with a "Release Notes" pamphlet  for Solaris 2.6
from Tadpole which mentioned this exact cdrom drive so it seems like a no
brianer.  Wrong.  I tried "boot cdrom" and got "can't open boot device".  I
tried changing the "time-out parameter" as instructed in the book but still
"can't open boot media".  I know that the scsi id is set to "6", and I have
tried it in both slots.  I didn't want to post anything if I could find a
answer and everything that I have found so far seems to work specifically
for connecting scsi cdrom's and not pcmcia cd-roms.  Any help would be
appreciated, thanks!

Jason King