SUMMARY [2]: booting a SPARC 430 (sun4) from CD

From: Daniel R. Falconer (drf@dedalus.net)
Date: Fri Sep 26 1997 - 05:53:11 CDT


Thanks to all who continued responding after my summary.

Fortunately, the problem was solved internally -- one of my colleagues here
suggested insisting on the correct command:

b sd(0,30,1)

To our surprise, after about 10 times typing the same command (to which we
got several different results, such as booting from (0,0,0), executing an
Illegal Instruction at PC xxxx, totally freezing, etc.) it started booting
(rather slowly) from the CD. Terminations were OK (as some suggested
checking), so I'm back to my previous conclusion -- some kind of partial
hardware failure, or maybe both bootable CD's I tried are (partially) damaged.

That's an interesting lesson to someone who thought that computer behavior
was predictable and repeatable... ;-)

I also forgot to mention that Torsten Metzner's contribution -- an
extensive description of the SCSI subsystem, including how to get to the
(x,x,x) numbers -- is available to all who request it (as some already have).

Best regards to all, and thank you once again.

on our old 4/430 box, which was the obvious (and documented) command. Most
of you suggested this. Others suggested the commands which work on desktop
systems: b sd(0,6,2) or boot cdrom. Special thanks to Torsten Metzner,
who also sent me an extensive description of the SCSI subsystem (including
how to get to the numbers above).

Nevertheless, I still wasn't able to boot from the CD-ROM drive. I'm
assuming that I'm facing some obscure hardware failure, as some suggested,
or maybe both bootable CD's I tried are damaged. Anyhow, it's time to
throw the old box away and start saving on my electricity bill.

Thanks to:

Tim Evans
Darryl Levesque
Mark Hargrave
Russ Poffenberger
Hap Hinrichs
Eric R. Ramelli
Robert.Gillespie
Patrick L. Nolan
Harvey Wamboldt
Rick Reineman
Glenn Satchell
Torsten Metzner

I hope I didn't forget anyone.

Regards,

Daniel R. Falconer
Dedalus Eng. S/C Ltda.
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Fax: 55-11-5506-1195
E-mail: drf@dedalus.net



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