SUMMARY: Data Access Error

From: Jacques Rall (jacques.rall@za.eds.com)
Date: Fri Jan 10 1997 - 05:03:05 CST


Original question:

Dear SMs,

What does it mean when the system does not boot and displays a message
on the console "Data Access Error"?

After switching on the box (Sparc 5, SunOS 4.1.4) it started to read
the kernel (vmunix) and then complaint about "Data Access Error" and
threw me back to the boot prompt.

After switching the box off and on again it complaint about an invalid
checksum of some sort and displayed that it would reset the NVRAM to
default settings.

When I did a 'test-all' it complained about the internal loopback
(network interface) not returning a proper packet.

This machine needs to be up and running by 7am (11 hours from now)
otherwise our client with all their branches across the country can't
connect to the mainframe (Sparc 5 acting as tcp/ip->sna converter).

Please assist.

Thanks
Jacques

Answer:

The IDPROM was a bit flaky because of some power fluctuations the data
centre experienced.

With the assistance of a Sun support person we reprogrammed the
IDPROM. Thanks to the IDPROM/NVRAM FAQ
(http://www.squirrel.com/squirrel/sun-nvram-hostid.faq.html thanks
Colin) and the IDPROM number printed on it, we entered the following
program at the boot prom:

NOTE: Our IDPROM's value is 77004F and thus our ethernet address was
8:0:20:77:00:4f.

        ok> 01 0 mkp
        ok> 80 1 mkp
        ok> 08 2 mkp
        ok> 0 3 mkp
        ok> 20 4 mkp
        ok> 77 5 mkp
        ok> 0 6 mkp
        ok> 4f 7 mkp
        ok> 0 8 mkp
        ok> 0 9 mkp
        ok> 0 a mkp
        ok> 0 b mkp
        ok> 77 c mkp
        ok> 0 d mkp
        ok> f4 e mkp
        ok> 0 f 0 do i idprom@ xor loop f mkp
        ok> reset

Thanks to *



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