[Sunhelp] SPARCstation 1+ serial/terminal problem and whats this?

[James Lockwood]

On Sat, 8 Jan 2000, Parris B. Wood wrote:

> 	I recently saved a sparc 1+ and two RS/6ks from heading off with a
> pile of x86 junk. Anyway it doesn't seem to have a framebuffer of any
> sorts, infact the only card in the box has a DB9 female connector on it.
> The only number that appear on it are:
> 
> 	4290 near the DB9 connector. The card is fully of varying size
> motorola chips, with a large LSI Logic chip near the end (near to the
> black handle on the card). The only other writing on it is this:

This is a framebuffer.  It is meant to drive an ECL monochrome (not
grayscale) monitor at 1152x900 or 1600x1200.  There should also be a
barcode with a part number on the sbus connector.

> 	Its on this wierd silver "chip" between two thin motorola chips
> near a jumper reading JMP4 if that means anything to anyone. I want to say
> its a serial card but...

That's a clock crystal for generating the video timings.

> 	With that in mind I have read that a sun will send output to
> Serial A if there is no framebuffer, mouse and keyboard pluged in so to be
> safe I yanked the "mystery card" hooked a null modem cable to the back of
> serial A into a pc and booted the sparc up.

The framebuffer makes no difference.  Suns will normally direct console
I/O to a serial port if the keyboard is disconnected. 

> 	The problem is nothing pops up, using hyperterminal, Tera Term,
> windows terminal or even a Wyse 50. I've tried varying terminal settings,
> no flow control, flow control. Even parity, no parity. Nothing even when
> having tera term send a break.
> 
> 	Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? I've also got an active scsi
> terminator on the back and an ethernet loopback on the aui port incase
> it is trying to netboot. Thanks for any help.

Take off the terminator, it should not be present unless there are
external devices present.  The rear connector is close enough to the
terminators on the motherboard.  Similarly, AUI loopback is unnecessary.

Set everything to 9600 8N1.  Be sure that you're not getting 2 null modems
in series, cables wired for null modem operation have screwed me up more
than once.

The NVRAM can be set to have console output go through serial port B as
well.  Try this, and if you still get nothing then hook up the keyboard
and hold down L1-N as you power on.  Keep it held for 30 seconds, then
power off and remove the keyboard.  This should force a sane NVRAM config.

Alternatively, you can try pulling the NVRAM (it's a Mostek 48T02) for
test purposes.

If no sbus cards or drives are present, then the powersupply may not have
enough load to function properly (it's a switcher).  Try adding a drive if
one was not installed.  Is RAM installed?  You need at least 4 SIMMs in
bank one.

If absolutely all else fails, then hook the keyboard back up, hold down
L1-D and power on.  The lights on the keyboard can be used to determine
where in the initialization process things are hanging.

-James