sun 4/260 with dead console: SUMMARY

From: J.S.Andrews@cen.exeter.ac.uk
Date: Wed Sep 08 1993 - 09:03:44 CDT


I wrote:
> So I have a sun 4/260, with no screen. Its definitely doing something becaus
> it can be stopped with stop-a from the keyboard, then type in b -s and it
> goes from pingable to unpingable.
> The only idea Ive got to try and fix it is to somehow get a terminal to work
> as a console off its serial port.

Thanks to everyone who sent me mail on this, especially Erik Fuller.

The received opinion seems to be that I shouldnt need to do anything bizarre,
if the console & keyboard are unplugged then all that needs to be done is
to put a terminal of some description in serial port A and power cycle the
machine.

However, I tried this and frankly it just didnt work :)

Erik pointed me towards putting the sun in diag mode (little switch on the
back) then power cycling it then waiting for the ten second gap at the end of
the diagnostic tests.
This did work. I got the boot monitor up, interactive, on the terminal and had
the thing working within 10 minutes.

Another point perhaps worth remembering is that everyone also insists that the
terminal shouldnt shouldnt shouldnt be disconnected after booting with it
on as nasty things ( like the system halting ) will happen. I havent put this
to the test, but there you are.

Thanks again,
James Andrews



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