[Sunhelp] Expert needed! .. SparcClassic appears 'dead'

[Derek Piper]

On Sat, 25 Mar 2000, Paul Khoury - Tech Support wrote:

> Have you tried swapping out RAM?
> 
> I had a simliar problem on a system, with known good RAM.
> Or it *WAS* working.
> 
> I had a friend check it in his SIMM checker, turns out the
> address lines were messed up - when it did work, on advanced
> diags, it wouldn't test any memory (was in an IPC, wouldn't count past
> 48MB).
> 
> The main thing I can think of is RAM.
> 
> Also, if you have any SBus cards, take anything out that's not critical
> to system operation for troubleshooting.
> 
> Ironically, I got that from a Microsoft Win2K conference - to keep it simple.
> Not typical Microsoft I suppose.
> 
> Paul


Hmm... thanks for that idea. :) No, I've not tried swapping the RAM out, I
know I did think it was all working. When the machine did come up in both
regular and diagnostic mode (I did it just to try it out) it tested and
passed all 48MB in the machine. In 2 x 16MB & 4 x 4MB in 16-4-4-16-4-4
layout as per the manual.

I will give that a go.. I did think though that as NO error lights seem to
turn up that the memory, NVRAM and board was okay (all the lights flash on
the keyboard briefly), which according to the service manual PDF I got
off Sun's website last week:

'If the system passes all the POSTs, all four LEDs light again and then go
off. Next the system banner appears on the screen.'

That's the bit I don't seem to get to now.. all the LEDs flash but no
banner.

I don't have any SBUS cards to worry about either btw, which makes things
simpler.

Is there a way to reset the NVRAM to possibly clear out any 'junk' that
might stop it from booting? .. I don't know about this myself (as the
NVRAM appears to be good by these diagnostic lights) but I'm scratching
around for answers. I know I've reset PC BIOSes to the defaults if I've
had strange problems (only ever had a dead PC when the graphics card had
died.. I'm even wondering if that happened to the sparc too ..). I'm
familiar with sorting out PCs .. not sparcs :)

	Thanks for that idea anyway, Paul .. I will try that. Any other
suggestions are of course welcome too.

	Derek

-- 
Derek Piper - del at delphinian.com - http://www.delphinian.com/