SUMMARY: Sbus Expansion

From: Chuck Uretzky (wbbart!cau@abars.att.com)
Date: Tue Apr 25 1995 - 06:30:40 CDT


Sorry for the delay in summarizing. I would like to thank the following
managers for responding.

Lisa Barnes
Ernie Chan

A special thanks to David Gunn, for he is the only one it seems who
has actually got it to work.

I haven't tried it yet due to the fact ours is a sticky situation. Our
product is based on a Sun workstation (currently a Sparc5). If Sun
does not support it we will not put it in the field. I have talked
to a Sun technical Rep and he wants me to try installing the patches
and the driver without a reboot in between. I don't know if David
did this. Yes, Sun does support it on a Sparc5 running Solaris 2.X.

Good news. We went through the same scare, and in the end we now have
an SBUS Expansion Card (xbox) running on a SPARC5 running SunOS
4.1.3_U1.
 
I was able to get it to work by installing the patches and driver in
this order:
 
          Installed 101508-07 (async memory fault, xbox compatibility)
          Installed 102161-01 (audio)
          Installed xbox 2.1 (xbox device driver)
          Installed 101508-07 (async memory fault, xbox compatibility)
          Installed 102161-01 (audio)
 
I have been told by Sun it works on SS5's running Solaris 2.
 
 
We had a SS5 running SunOS 4.1.3_UI with patch 101508-07 installed for
an async. memory fault we were experiencing with 32MB SIMMs. We were
also planning on installing patch 10216-01 for audio.
 
When we first tried to install the device drivers for it, the kernel
kept getting data access exceptions when rebooting. The people at
SunService were perplexed as to why we were getting the exceptions.
 
When I first ordered the xbox we were told by SunExpress that it would
work on a SS5. The xbox documentation did not list the SS5 as one of
the supported systems. Jill at SunExpress faxed me a spec sheet that
listed the SS5 as one of the systems the box works with.
 
The documentation on the CD stated that the system requirements
included running PROM level 2.2 or greater. Jill's fax indicated the
minimum PROM level was 2.0. Sun was going to send me PROM level 2.2,
but then I was told they couldn't because it was so new it was not
available yet. I noticed that the timestamp on the CD documentation
file was several years old, so maybe it was a typo; maybe it was
supposed to have read 1.2 instead of 2.2.
 
In the process of going through all of the above, it came to our
attention that patch 101508-07, which we needed for the async memory
faults, was also needed for the xbox. The problem is that the xbox
driver doc says there are several files that cannot have been
patched before installing the driver. Two of these files are patched
by 101508 (openprom_xxx.c, autoconf.c), which are included in the
patch. (The patch also says to install the driver first). We tried
installing the driver without the patch, but still got the exceptions.
 
To make the rest of the story short, I was finally able to get things
to work by installing things in the order listed at the top of this
message. Don't ask me why I had to install the patches before *and*
after I installed the driver. What I can tell you is that we have had
no problems since.

-- 
Charles A. Uretzky
Dept. NQ NQ38000P0
AT&T Commvault, Eatontown, N.J.
abars!cau or cau@abars.att.com



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