[SPARCbook] SPARCbook 3 SCSI Advice

[Mark Wickens]

Hi,

My first post to the list. Hope someone is listening ;)

I have a SPARCbook 3 and just bought an Apple HDI30 to HD50 external
SCSI cable, with a view to trying the external SCSI floppy drive that
came with the SPARCbook but more importantly attaching an external hard
drive and CDROM so that I may backup the machine and install Solaris
2.6.

When I attach the cable at the SPARCbook end and leave the other end
disconnected the SPARCbook booted fine. When I attached the other end to
an external disk pack that was turned on prior to the SPARCbook booting
the screen went from black to white but did not display the SPARCbook
logo. It appeared to still be functioning - if I typed PAUSE-A then
'boot disk' the machine booted.

I tried various combinations of drives but for the most part the
SPARCbook hung. Alarmingly this also happened afterwards when the cable
was completely disconnected. However, after being left a while it did
boot and after a 'reset' it appeared to behave itself.

Is this normal behaviour? I'm trying to narrow down what the issue is
*without* damaging the SPARCbook, so any advice is greatly appreciated.
Is it worth me attaching a serial console to port A to see if there are
any diagnostics being issued?

BTW - none of the peripherals I connected were SUN-specific, in fact
they were an external generic SCSI hard disk enclosure and a DEC BA350 3
drive canister external housing. I was able to do a probe-scsi when the
BA350 was attached and a list of the drives attached, but that was not
repeatable.

Thanks for the help,

Mark.