Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 21:17:01 +0200 From: Joerg Wunsch <j@ida.interface-business.de> To: Mikko Tyolajarvi <mikkot@pacbell.net> Cc: freebsd-sparc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sun AXi boot success Message-ID: <20020904211701.A7085@ida.interface-business.de> In-Reply-To: <20020904090938.R69871-100000@atlas.home>; from mikkot@pacbell.net on Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 09:20:24AM -0700 References: <20020904143637.F96461@ida.interface-business.de> <20020904090938.R69871-100000@atlas.home>
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As Mikko Tyolajarvi wrote: > Google -> "SparcEngine AXi OEM Technical Manual". First hit is: > <http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/nep/docs/>. Yep, i known one can get it online. It's only that i once printed it, but probably aren't going to reprint those n-hundred pages again without making a reasonable attempt to dig up the old copy here first. ;-) > Mine is 440MHz. Actually, I have two, but I fried the on-board scsi on > the slower (360MHz) one, so now it is a door stop (with 512M memory). > I don't suppose anybody has a sparc bootable (openfirware) scsi card > laying around? Do you really need it? I haven't yet tried with the AXi, but with other Suns, and always found that the treat that you need a Sun- approved SCSI card is just marketing hype. Openboot can handle the Symbios Logic controllers pretty well by itself. (Maybe the AXi would need an Openboot upgrade first, which will become really hard if you don't have a running disk attached to it...) I've been testing this both ways, by plugging a 53c875-based PC-`junkware' card into some Sun, as well by testing a Sun-shipped one (with the Openboot extension PROM) into a PC. In the latter case, obviously the PC still had the old SDMS BIOS extension, thus could even use that card as a (fairly expensive :) boot controller. Using the Tekram controller in the Sun worked fine though, too. (I forgot which Sun it was, but it should work for all the newer ones. IIRC mine was an Ultra 5 or 10.) I guess matters are different for an Adaptec-based SCSI controller though. Then, there's of course also the option to replace the chip on the AXi board, but that's a bit more risky. You need a bit of experience in soldering that large QFP chips. Basically, it works best using a heat gun from the hardware (the `true' hardware, i mean :) shop, something you would normally use to burn off old paint. But you gotta be careful to not burn your PCB with it, and to minimize the heat-generated mechanical stress. Anyway, i once successfully resoldered an old IBM 220's PCB using this method where the board had become flakey. If you plan doing this, just get an old PC mainboard somewhere, and practice a little unsoldering and resoldering the various chips on it. ;-) Btw., replacing BGA chips is quite more adventurous, but people managed to do even this using hobbyist methods. -- J"org Wunsch Unix support engineer joerg_wunsch@interface-systems.de http://www.interface-systems.de/~j/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-sparc" in the body of the message
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