[SunRescue] Boot prom incantations on SparcStation 4/330?

[BSD Bob the old greybeard BSD freak]

> > James...  Are there any drive limitations on the 4/330 as to
> > drive size or number of drives on the bus chain, in SunOS or
> > Solaris?  I was thinking Solaris 2.4 fixed the drive size limit,
> > but don't remember offhand for SunOS 4.1 (1 gig?) or 4.1.3 (1.3 gig?).
> 
> I've ran 9GB drives on SunOS 4.1.3u1.  From what I remember the only issue
> there with large drives was the fact that "format" would time out during
> an operation that involved the entire drive.  Partitioning and newfs'ing
> the drive was fine.

Ahh, I see that in the format.dat listings on some drives.

> SunOS 4 without Online:DiskSuite will be limited to 2GB partitions.
> Regardless of your OS you should make the root partition no larger than
> 1GB if you want the kernel to boot reliably.

I would never want a root that big, anyway.  A root should only contain
the minimal system bin and scripts and be a hanging off place for all
the other fs's.  I will keep the 2g fs limitation in mind, tho.

> Any of the operating systems you listed can support 7 devices on the SCSI
> chain, though you will need to rebuild the SunOS 4 kernel to allow that
> many.  I would advise against that many devices externally unless most of
> them are in one or two large cases with short wiring as the 4/330 has
> quite a bit of SCSI cable internally.

My thought was maybe to hang a DEC storageworks shelf off the outboard
line, for archive/web storage, and use the internal drives for system
bits.  That would tend to keep cable runs fairly short, externally.

Is there any kind of option for a second scsi board of some kind in
the remaining VME slot?  Ram should probably go there, if possible,
though.

> > Also, can you confirm the scsi cabling from the cpu through the
> > drive bays and then out to external?
> > 
> >                  top plug ----------terminator or external drives?
> >                      |
> >                      |
> >     cpu   -----  bottom plug
> 
> Correct.  Note that the long cable going to the external drives is fairly
> squashed and bent in places and I had frequent failures when maintaining a
> lab of 20 4/330's.  The first thing you should do if you have SCSI
> problems is to replace that cable or move internal devices out.

Ahh, good to know.

How does one correctly get INTO those cables?  I see a set of large
screws on the back panel cover (two at the top and a row of three
down the back).  I am assuming that will get you inside, or is there
a removable side cover on the drive side?

Are there any other things to remember about opening it up and/or
cleaning the guts for dust bunnies, etc?

> If you are going to run external devices (or an external terminator, which
> I recommend) then you need to pull the terminating resistor packs under
> the metal plate on the top rear of the case.

OK, that is good to know.  I usually run external terminators.
They are easier to keep up with, than trying to remember what is
terminated internally, although that cover to the terminator is
a nice idea.

> > Any other quirks, offhand, especially about the nvram chip.
> > I have been having bad karma with failing nvram chips lately.
> 
> Never had any problems with mine.

On this particular 4/330 class machine, with 13W3 to a usual
Sun monitor and type 5 keyboard, what revision OS would be
best to run out of SunOS 4.1, SunOS 4.1.3, or Solaris 2.4?
Are there any underlying reasons why one might be better than
the other on this particular hardware?  My thoughts were to
use the thing as a small server rather than a graphical box,
but I like the large monitor as a console, so will use it over
a terminal.  Although old, SunOS 4.1.x has always been good
to me as a low-end box on the 4/260 crate.

Thanks

Bob