Well...I hope I am in the right forum to post this question. Here is what I am trying to do.

I have a laptop (Dell I believe) running Windows. I am trying to connect this laptop to a V240 serial port (the port with l0l0l). Here lies the problem, I am not sure if I have the correct cable. I do not have a cable that connects to the serial port and at times I think I do but nothing happens.

However, when someone tries to connect a RJ-45 I believe to the serial management port, I get something coming up on the hyperterminal screen and this is the POST/debugging and it keeps going over and over.

I am trying to find the right cable. Previous guy said he bought a cable to connect from the laptop tp the V240 serial port. He has left and I forgot what cable he had. After poking around on the internet and looking at SUN's docs, it allears I need a cable with DB-9 (female) to connect to the V240 serial port (the l0l0l port), but do I get the USB or the RJ-45 for the laptop?

I have looked in Office Depot and Best Buy and Radio Shack, and they seem to only have the DB-9 (male) USB cable. Do they make the cable I need in DB-9 (female) with RJ-45?

Then...once this cable is set up , I can look at the system and try to get to the >ok prompt. Right now, the hyperterminal is showing:

probing system device
probing memory
probing I/O buses
and repeating over and over.

Since the hyperterminal is showing this, I guess that means my connection from laptop to v240 is correct? Note that the way it is set up now, the cable is going to the serial management port and I always thought it should go to the serial (DB-9) port?

Help clarify this for me...seems a bit confusing to me. Eventually we want to load a Solaris OS on the vt240 so my guess is we need to be connected to the serial port (DB-9)...if so what cable do I need? BTW, we have one cable that can plug into the serial port (its 9 pin) but this cable produces nothing on the screen???

TIA...

What are you wanting to do? If you want the serial console, then the serial management port is the one you want. This is an RJ45 connector that then needs to be converted to an RS232 connector for your laptop's (9pin?) serial port.

Forget USB, it has nothing to do with serial terminals.

porter,

Eventually we want to install a Solaris 8 (I know this is an old system, but this is a test lab and we want to test stuff on a Solaris 8 OS). You are right that the laptop has a 9pin so right now it is set up with an adapter for a RJ-45.

So apparently my system is set up correctly the way it is now. I thought we should use the serial port (9pin) on the V240 instead of the serial management port. Here is a cutout from SunDocs:
_________________
The SERIAL MGT port accepts an RJ-45 connector. Use this port only for server management.

The port labelled 10101 accepts a DB-9 connector. Use this port for general purpose serial data transfer
__________________

What is the serial port labeled 10101 used for then? With connection via the serial management port, will I be able to install the OS from a CD in the laptop CD drive? My guess is that server management means 'managing the server liek a SysAdm does" and serial data transfer means 'transferring data to the server via the serial cables'.

Well, guess you answered my question. Now...I got to see if I can get out of the looping probing it is doing for eternity. I think you can disable POST to make it boot up quicker right?

TIA for your help!

Yes, plenty of goodies in the OpenBoot prom to keep you busy.

I recommend you setup a Solaris boot server, throw the Sol8 disks on that and boot the machine over the network to do the installation. It means you need another machine on the same subnet and need to get the MAC address of the V240, but if you will be attempting the installation a couple of times it saves the effort. Also, it proves ahead of time that there are no read errors on the disks.

While still the simplest way to do it, it is not strictly true that the same subnet is needed anymore, Solaris can be booted over WAN on the 240, as it can on most hardware which is as recent as the 240.

It 'appears' I got the laptop serial connected to the v240 via the serial mgt port.

However, nothing will work to send a break sequence to the Sol9 box. As I indicated in a previous message above, the screen on laotp shows the system going through the probing and keep at this vicious cycle

I have used many different key sequence to get the systme to break this sequence. I am sur enot all of these will/can apply to the laptop, bt hey gott atry everything until something works. Here is what I tried:
~.
~#
return ~ ctrl +b
ctrl +c
stop +a
<enter>#
~~#
~:~~#
<enter>~~#

Anyone got any thing slese for me to try??? I've googled and found all of these, but there is so much to look at and it is hard to find something that is specific to my situation. My guess is someone has had this problem before since its fairly common to attach a Windows Laptop top to the serial mgt port.

Another thought, would a Solaris OS laptop help??

If you know anything else to try, let me know.

TIA

Using Window's HyperTerm I use the "break" key which is normally on one of the pause/scrolllock/printscreen buttons. You will have to use either ctrl/shift or alt to use it.