[SunHELP] SS20 Solaris 7 boot issue

[Mark Benson]

On 23/01/2017 23:35, Jerry Kemp wrote:
> Hello Mark,
>
> I have the same comments Peter had.  I was just looking at Wikipedia,
> and multiple articles seem to suggest your box should be good for

It'#s not the framebuffer. I swapped it (i.e. yanked the onboards SIMM 
and installed a card) for a TGX and the same happens. Other odd thing, 
with the TGX in it did this after the RAM test on POST:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/h5go20s8zvgzw33/2017-01-24%2017.53.19.jpg?dl=0

A Stop-A brought it back to the OBP ok prompt but it was a bit odd, just 
sat and spammed it continuously if I left it. Anyway, with the TGX in it 
did exactly the same thing.

Looking at the error in a little more detail it looks like it can't load 
a driver for the CDROM (external) and is barfing from not being able to 
mount the CDROM root?

> Solaris 2.3 thru Solaris 9.
> Is there a special reason you need to run Solaris 7?  My recollection
> was that it did not bring that much to the table.
>
> 2.6 was pretty stable, and I ran it on a lot of equipment for quite a
> long time, back in the day.  OTOH, If I were wanting/needing some newer
> features (i.e. IPv6), I would probably look towards Solaris 8.

Only thing I have on CDROM. I'm a little out of it when it comes ot 
Solaris, I used 10 exclusively most of the time back when I had the gear 
for it.

I have 9.0 on DVD but it  won't read it (I don't thing the OBP can 
interpret UDF formats?)

> It is also mentioned that Solaris 9 should run, but Solaris 9 was not my
> favorite.  I'm a OpenWin fan on one hand, and, even if I wasn't, I can't
> imagine that CDE would be especially pleasant on a Sparc Station 20.
>
> Do you have other media?  Either for Solaris 7 or for other Solaris
> versions?

I have 2 copies of Solaris 7, one's official but scratched, it does 
that, the other is a burn but on an old CDR and it does the same. It 
might just be 2 lots of bad media?

I'm woefully short on Sun boot media for anything but Solaris 10 TBH.


-- 

Mark Benson
twitter.com/MDBenson