Hi Guys,

I just purchased a 2nd-hand Sparc5 (old dog, 110MHz,
128MB, 2GB HDD) without any peripherals and am now
trying to access it via serial A ... not very successfully.

minicom and hyperterm (yes, in my despair I've used the
evil OS which is installed on the PC I got from work)
both don't seem to be getting anything back from the box.


I've used the same settings that I've successfully used
with the V240 at work (9600,8N1, XON/XOFF).

I supposed the next question I have to ask myself is
whether that thing would get me to OBP without anything
attached, or whether I should assume that the box is
just dead.

Any pointers greatly appreciated!


Cheers,
Tink

If you have a Sun keyboard, hold down the stop and d key while you apply power. This will force the system into extended POST which always outputs to ttya regardless of PROM settings. If you get output then you know the port is working. To reset the PROM variables, hold down stop and n. If you get no output with the stop-d then you may have a bad cpu, low bank of ram, boot prom, or MLB.

Thanks for the response, unfortunately "no peripherals" includes
no keyboard.

Should sparcs beep with errors, or are they not meant to boot
without a keyboard?


Cheers,
Tink

they will boot fine without a keyboard. At power on, when no keyboard is sensed, they automatically output to ttya. If you get no OK prompt, you are dealing with RAM, PROM, CPU, and MLB. If you have more than 1 bank of RAM, try swapping them. POST always loads in the low bank. Also try re-seating everything and blowing out the dust.

I've seen a second hand serial console terminal thingy for
~15US$ locally, I suppose I'll give that a shot ... without
any visual I find it quite hard to make sense of what I get :}


Cheers,
Tink