[Sunhelp] Type 6 keyboard, E250, Solaris 7 5/99

[McMurry, James A.]

As many of you may have rightly guessed, this was a motherboard problem, as
confirmed by obdiag.

Sun replaced the motherboard, and life is great again.

This is the second E250 I've gotten (out of two) which have had bad
motherboards on arrival.  Is this normal?

Anyway, just wanted to follow up.  Lesson learned:  POST doesn't check
everything, and you should always check everything before you freak out.

Regards,
jm


-----Original Message-----
From: McMurry, James A. [mailto:James.McMurry at destia.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 1999 10:35 AM
To: 'sunhelp at sunhelp.org'
Subject: [Sunhelp] Type 6 keyboard, E250, Solaris 7 5/99


Hi!

When I boot this system after installation, I get this message:

	loadkeys: ioctl(KIOCLAYOUT): Timer expired

One time, I saw:

	kdb:  Unknown keyboard type, Type 3 assumed

After the system comes up, I find that I can do almost nothing with it,
because garbage keeps appearing as I type, something like the line noise I
used to get with my 2400 bps non-error-correcting modem.  Keypresses don't
always register, the wrong character appears, etc.

So I go to the Solaris 7 5/99 Sun Hardware Platform Guide, where it doesn't
mention the Type 6 keyboard as a supported option.  Oops.

I am amazed.  Sun doesn't manufacture backwards-compatible **keyboards**?!?

The keyboard works fine in the EPROM and seemed OK during the Solaris
installation.  I'm hoping I can get access to the system using a null modem
cable on port A, but I haven't tried that yet.  Assuming I can get the
system up in a condition where I can actually type on it, does anyone know
what my options are to get this working?  I suppose I could (as a last
resort) send the keyboard back to the vendor and get a Type 5, but I'm
opposed to that on principle.

BTW, I tried adding a user so I could telnet in, but it's too screwed for me
to type anything useful past "useradd".

Thanks for any assistance you can offer,

James McMurry
GNMC Systems Administration Manager
Destia Communications, Inc.