[Torkum73]

Hi everyone,

I have a SunFire V890 (called "Susi") with 8x UltraSparc IV+ 2,1 GHz and 32 GB of RAM.
I can start her up and with my serial console I can see the post is going good. But she gives a nondescript error, when she tries to switch to graphics.
She has a FireGL card installed since I bought her. The card is ok, because I tested it in my V490 and there I get a picture. 
I tried multiple PCI slots.
The card should be compatible?
I just get an error like "the graphics could not be initialized" and immediately after the screen blanks. So I have no screenshots.
Are there any logs saved somewhere?
Via serial console I can even install Solaris 10 on the hard drives. But no graphics there either. The install tries to switch to graphics mode, but then continues in text mode.

I mean, she is a very efficient space heater and I do not have a good use case for her, but it irks me, that there is something not right with her.

Does anybody have an idea?

Carsten

[vishnu]

So is that the FireGL V8650? Should work on Solaris 10:

https://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technet.../3033.html

What's the LED status?

[Torkum73]

So is that the FireGL V8650? Should work on Solaris 10:

https://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technet.../3033.html

What's the LED status?

I had a look at the card and it has a Sun FRU 375-3290-01 sticker, so it should be a regular XVR-100 card.
   

If you mean the LEDs in the front display, there are no warnings for left or right doors.

I ordered a XVR-600 from the bay and will have a look when it arrives in a few days.

Since I live in Germany and electricity is at a premium, I try not to fire up the 3x2750W power house unnecessarily in diag mode, which takes at least 35min to complete :-)
My wife also seconds that strongly.

Do you know if there is a special slot reserved for graphic adapters?

btw, here is a picture, when I first got her...
   

[vishnu]

Are you using the DVI port or the VGA port? If the board's not failed the only thing I can think is that for some reason it's trying to start to an unsupported resolution, what does fbconfig -res \? tell you?

[johnnym]

[...]

I had a look into the Sun System Handbook and it at least confirms that the card is supported by the V890. Under "Notes" it also tells that:

"The DVI-A port does not support 1920 × 1200 × 60Hz."

...but the Sun XVR-100 Graphics Accelerator Installation Guide under "[...] Default Console Display" also tells:

"Only the Sun XVR-100 graphics accelerator HD15 video output connector can provide console output. You cannot set the DVI video connector as the console."

...so using its DVI port as console might not work at all.

This chapter also tells, how to configure the HD15 output as console output. Do these steps at least work for you?

---

BTW, the System Handbook also labels these cards as "ATI Radeon 7000 MAC Edition" cards. Could that mean, that all PCI graphics cards for Power Macs could be used as glass console for Sun machines, too? Not that I find this important, I'm much more happy that I can control my Suns via serial console, but still interesting.

[robespierre]

The "Mac Edition" has a Open Firmware fcode program in its ROM, so it should more or less work with Sun's OpenBoot 3.0 which was intended to be compatible. Both systems are big-endian, which helps.

[johnnym]

Although a little off-topic, but a really useful thing for Macs would be FCODE that enables a USB to serial adapter to work as serial console for them. E.g. the only PowerMac G5 I have with a 3rd party serial port is not working properly, it's an early 2005 PowerMac7,3. And I unfortunately haven't seen any serial port hardware for PowerMac11,2s.

[vishnu]

I bought a Mac powerbook around 12 years ago, couldn't figure out a single useful thing to do with it, so I gave it to a friend, who had the same experience. Now it's running Slackware 15, and running it very well... 😀

[johnnym]

That's the spirit, last time I used Slackware it was at version 11 or 12, with real work ((para)virtualization with PPros) done on 10.x!

So bought around 2010, that's an x86 based Macbook already then, right? I wonder did they still use OpenFirmware on these, too? That would make them interesting, though I'd still prefer my Thinkpad X201 over anything, actually. The matching UltraBase allows it to be used as desktop, too - w/o restarts or other bs.

[robespierre]

No, x86 Macs do not have Open Firmware, they are UEFI based. The parameter passing from boot code to XNU does look similar to how OF does it.