Re: 11 quid E450 not surprisingly wont boot..

>From: Angus Fox <[email protected]>
>Date: 2008/03/16 Sun AM 04:40:34 CDT
>To: suns-at-home <[email protected]>
>Subject: [Suns-at-Home] 11 quid E450 not surprisingly wont boot..

>I scored an E450 with 4GB 1x 400MHz and 20 drives on ebay for eleven  
>pounds GBP. (now thats depreciation!)
>
>Of course it doesnt boot (yet) - but it nearly does.
>
>Id like to get it going rather than cannibalise it.. Plenty of cheap  
>E450 parts on ebay means that theres no limit to what can be replaced..
>
>I couldnt resist it - full of drives :-)


Very nice score.

>All Power is green, the key mechanism works.
>
>OBP loads, I can see the hostid and Sun banner, It displays memory (it  
>seems to think 2GB now) it gets as far as the initialising | which  
>doesnt turn and it just hangs there forever.
>
>I tried the diagnostic boot, same thing. I tried breaking into NVRAM  
>and can get to an OK prompt and lots of drives show up :-) but from  
>there on Im not sure.

Have you tried "stop-n" to reset the ONP/NVRAM to defaults? I suspewct there may be some funky settings in place from the previous owner, and this would help get the machine back.

Have you tried to boot a Solaris CD-ROM? That would eliminate any odd partitoning that may have been savaged by the previous owner (before dumping the box for 11 quid ;^)

Were this machine in front of me, I would have taken the following steps (briefly):

1) Visually inspect the hardware for obvious problems, and if none, power it up as-is. Note results.

2) Crack out canned air and clean all the dust bunnies out, esp. around chassis and PS fans and boot again, note results.

3) Absent a successful boot, I would then boot with "stop-n" and reset NVRAM/OBP settings to their defaults and note results.

4) If I were still absent a successful boot, I'd reseat the RAM, the CPU (make sure it is in the proper slot for single CPU operation) and remove all HDs and boot again, noting results.

5) Were I finally successful, I would install one HD, install a minimal Solaris installation and the VTS software to exercise the hardware and let it run for a day or so, noting results. If that were successful, I'd feed in additional disks and buld up the system.

>I am planning to take all the memory out and boards and drives out and  
>slowly rebuild it checking if it boots each time. That way I can  
>isolate the defect.

If you get the non-spinning "|" character, the error might be in the software image on the HDs themselves.

>Im sad to say I dont know a lot about this class of machine, being an  
>Ultra 10 sort of person. If anyone has the time to send me links to  
>places of interest or indeed immediatley knows the likely  
>troubleshooting steps please feel free to email me directly and I will  
>summarize.

The methodology is the same, trust your instincts and use the force ;^)

If the above doesn't help, drop another note to the list and we'll see if we can't sort it out for you.

Ken