[SunRescue] Sparcstation 20

[Jonathan Katz]

On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, pixie_fae wrote:

:i'm a relative newbie to this world of Suns/Solaris/Unix etc.but I could really use some advice and help if anyone has any information.
:   I basically garbage picked an old Sun Sparcstation 20 recently and dont know too much about it, ive done some research on it and i'm still pretty confused as to what my next step as far as fixing it up should be.
:When i first found it, it had no memory in it, so i picked 64 megs up fairly cheap on E-bay. it now powers on and will make a beep so long as i have the keyboard plugged into it. However one of the hard drives spins rather noisilly and i assume its no good (it has 3 hard drives mounted in it 2 of them are seagates, and one of them is a quantum)  anyhow I'm fairly certain that the monitor isn't working, it powers on but will not display anything at all, not even a testpattern. if anyone has any ideas or suggestions as to what would be the next step in resurecting this thing i would love to hear from you.

Your best bet for right now would be to crack out a null-modem serial cable.

Plug the serial cable into ttya on the back of the SS20. Make sure the
keyboard isn't plugged in.

Setup minicom or hyperterminal, or something on your PC to be at 9600/8-n-1.
Connect that cable to your PC. Then power up the SS20.

Assuimg the SS20 is working (which it is, because it is getting as far as
beeping when you power it on w/ the keyboard) You should see a whole lot of
information on your PC. It will tell you how much RAM it detects, what
kind of graphics may be installed, that there is no keyboard plugged in,
and what speed procsesor(s) it has. You can dump that information to the list,
and we can help you from there, tell you what you have, and all that.

-Jon
-- 
Jonathan Katz
e-mail: jon at jonworld.com 
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