[maverickbna]

Cool! What does it run, SunOS 4.1.4?

[NoodlesMcPastaMan]

I have an ultra 24 workstation, a sunfire x4500. both working and somewhat complete. I also have a storagetek 6100 i'm currently trying to part out.

[commodorejohn]

Just picked up an Ultra 2 Creator box from an electronics scrapcyclesaler near my workplace. Looks like it's 2x166 MHz with a decent-looking RAM loadout. Now I just have to remember how the hell that stupid power switch works...

[commodorejohn]

Now I remember how the hell that stupid power switch works...it doesn't. Fortunately, the PS/2-to-Sun converter I have comes with a built-in power button for just such an occasion...! The Ultra 2 is more or less alive and well, although it's being a little crotchety - it's insistent on running the full POST suite before even giving me OpenBoot access over the serial port, to say nothing of displaying anything on the monitor. The POST halts with the message "OBIO Interrupt is in an incorrect state," whatever that means. It's not a dead battery, since it's bugging me for the firmware password when it finally does give me the OpenBoot prompt...

Nearly a gigabyte of RAM in this sucker!

[johnnym]

Now I remember how the hell that stupid power switch works...it doesn't. Fortunately, the PS/2-to-Sun converter I have comes with a built-in power button for just such an occasion...! The Ultra 2 is more or less alive and well, although it's being a little crotchety - it's insistent on running the full POST suite before even giving me OpenBoot access over the serial port, to say nothing of displaying anything on the monitor. The POST halts with the message "OBIO Interrupt is in an incorrect state," whatever that means. It's not a dead battery, since it's bugging me for the firmware password when it finally does give me the OpenBoot prompt...

This thread mentions that you could be able to reset that firmware password by starting the machine without NVRAM, wait for the ok prompt, reinstall the NVRAM (carefully) and use set-defaults to finally clear the firmware password. I don't remember if I ever had to do that on one of my Sun machines, but starting w/o NVRAM is definitely possible.

For the full POST: maybe the environment is configured to run diagnostics all the time or after each cold start.

BTW, if that NVRAM still has juice in it, the machine must have been running a lot to not drain the NVRAM battery - or maybe the NVRAM got replaced some time in between.

[thunderbird32]

Just picked up an Ultra 2 Creator box from an electronics scrapcyclesaler near my workplace. Looks like it's 2x166 MHz with a decent-looking RAM loadout. Now I just have to remember how the hell that stupid power switch works...

I'm jealous, I've wanted an Ultra 2 to replace my Ultra 1 for quite some time now. The lack of UPA slots really makes the (non-Creator) Ultra 1 less than desirable.

[commodorejohn]

BTW, if that NVRAM still has juice in it, the machine must have been running a lot to not drain the NVRAM battery - or maybe the NVRAM got replaced some time in between.

Yeah, I'm curious how recently it was in the field - I know it was in the shop I picked it up from back in September, but clearly it hasn't been sitting unplugged that long. Also wondering what the original application was - there's an asset tag on it, but I think it's from a liquidation agency rather than the actual original owner. Be really interesting to see what's on it if the hard drive's still good.

[vishnu]

I've got a Blade 2500, 2x1.6GHz UltraSPARC IIIi, an XVR-1200 and 16 GB of RAM, runs Pro/E Wildfire 4 like a champ!

[commodorejohn]

This thread mentions that you could be able to reset that firmware password by starting the machine without NVRAM, wait for the ok prompt, reinstall the NVRAM (carefully) and use set-defaults to finally clear the firmware password. I don't remember if I ever had to do that on one of my Sun machines, but starting w/o NVRAM is definitely possible.

Well, I tried this, but it just gets stuck starting the POST and never actually gets anywhere...

[johnnym]

This thread mentions that you could be able to reset that firmware password by starting the machine without NVRAM, wait for the ok prompt, reinstall the NVRAM (carefully) and use set-defaults to finally clear the firmware password. I don't remember if I ever had to do that on one of my Sun machines, but starting w/o NVRAM is definitely possible.

Well, I tried this, but it just gets stuck starting the POST and never actually gets anywhere...

Sad to hear that. Does that help to bypass the POST:

Bypassing POST

POST may be disabled and bypassed. To bypass POST:

1. Prior to powering on the system, press and hold the Stop and D keys on the
keyboard

2. With holding down the keyboard Stop and D keys, press the Power-on to turn on
the system unit.

...from https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19127-01/ult...561-11.pdf, page 48.

There it also reads:

Additional Keyboard Control Commands

Stop Key

If the diag-level is set to either max or min and the diag-level switch?
variable is set to true and POST is not to be executed when the system unit is powered on,
press and hold the Stop key and press the Power-on key.

Note: Press and hold the Stop key for approximately 5 seconds.

Stop and N Keys

To set the system NVRAM parameters to the original default settings, press and hold
the Stop and N keys before powering on the system. Continue to hold the Stop and
N keys until the system banner is displayed on the monitor.

I don't know if the latter is equivalent to the set-defaults command or if it just resets the diag[...] NV vars.

Other idea: You could try to install a compatible NVRAM (48T59) from another Sun machine, maybe the OBP issues a set-defaults automatically in this case. It shouldn't hurt to use the NVRAM of another machine. IIRC I once successfully reprogrammed the IDPROM of my Blade 100 in an Enterprise 250 because the OPB 4.x of the Blade 100 was missing the mkp/mkpl commands and I didn't knew how to reprogram the IDPROM using Forth's c! command at that time.