Solaris

Hi Everybody,

Hope everybody is having fun with their Solaris installations and not pulling out too much of whatever hair they have left so far.

Just for sport, I bought an old Netra 240 used by Northern Telecom Turkish subsidiary Netas here in Turkey. My hope is to turn this into an ugly workstation for playing with some old CAD software. At worst, I like to install some Linux or BSD on it, if I can get it up. My server I mean.

I do not know the last IP numbers used for it. And cannot get a response from serial management port. Here are the steps I have taken so far with some pics.

1- Connected two 48V DC power supplies to its internal power makers. They are both on seem to work fine. The cases say they produce 13V, 3.3V etc. However I just measure 4,9V on all pins of both supplies. Maybe the case sticker is outdated. They do seem to do their job as will be seen.



2- When power is first supplied management ethernet port link light comes on when connected to a switch. However the critical light on front also does. When the card at front is taken out the back error light with wrench sign comes on. There is no response from the serial port.



3- After turning the little blue knob at front half a turn either way, the on switch next to it brings up main power and the big air fan starts working with a big whoosh. The hard disk power light turns on temporarily then goes out. DVD has no lights on. Its button is unresponsive. Does not seem to have power. But its in place firmly. I can take it out and insert back. Hard Disk also comes in and out securely. Regular ethernet ports start lighting up after the main fan works. However the "critical" light at front panel is still on.



4- I tried Putty, TeraTerm, MobaXTerm, and BB ComTest programs to get a response from the serial port to no avail. It seems deaf, unresponsive. I did check my serial cable with TX-RX pin short. However when Netra is powered on with terminal emulator open, a single character came up into terminal which might be indicating serial port is electrically excited during start up, hence connected to something.

MY QUESTION is to people with actual real Sun Server experience. What should be checked and tried in these situations? What would you do? What compartment inside the case should I dismantle? Should I try to send or broadcast a Wake-On-LAN signal packet? Is there a default local LAN IP address that these servers are assigned with? Is this thing alive yet? If yes, how can I start communicating? etc. etc.

This has been a long time dream of mine to be able to tap into a real sun sparc server. Thanks to their sexy Frog Design boxes and ever nimble marketing, these clunky boxes has been every engineer's wettest dream for a long time. I have to see what the buzz has been about these please. I want in!

Rest of my pictures are in the following message. Thanks for checking me out. Any ideas would truly be greatly appreciated!

These are the rest of the pictures of my efforts on reviving the Netra.

Firstly, thank you for providing such a comprehensive analysis of what you have tried. It helps us a lot to try and help you meaningfully.

Digest each of these statements I provide here and ask any questions if they're not clear enough.

The Netra 240 comprises (what can be regarded as two systems) the 'service processor' and the main processor.

The service processor (also known as SC) powers up as soon as volts are applied.

The main processor is under the control of the SC and may/or may not be programmed to power up automatically after the SC has started.

The SC reports its boot sequence via the SER-MGT port which is a RJ-45 interface!!!!! So you need a RJ-45 to DB-9 adapter which is a cable supplied in the box with a new machine. Do you have this? If not, a CISCO serial management cable (coloured light blue RJ-45 to DB-9) which CISCO network engineers use has the same pin-out so try and steal one of those.

Connect one end to the RJ-45 SER-MGT port (NOT the NET-MGT port) and the other end (DB-9) to an old laptop or the like with a serial DB9 port. Run a terminal emulator (default 9600-8-N-1) and then apply volts to the NETRA. If garbage appears on the terminal emulator, the baud rate is wrong; try a different speed.

Keep trying until it talks sense and then you are talking to the SC.

Wow! Thanks for such a speedy, comprehensive and very kind reply Mr. Hicks! I will try the new method, and get back to you. I do thank Mr. Corona as well for connecting my message to you. My sincere respects to you both for all your hard work, experience, and having the heart to share it all... This really is wonderful.

Hicksd8 found it all by himself. If you don't get an answer immediately, don't panic, just wait -- we have many knowledgeable people, but they aren't active 24 hours a day.

My Good Man Hicksd8,

Using that light blue flat cable, and power it up after connecting worked its charm. It seems to pass all tests. I can turn off the "critical" light with "setalarm critical off", I can turn main power on with just "poweron" command. I start to see a little beauty from this heavy box. Can not boot an OS yet, but I will see the manual I downloaded. Here are the pics:

Well done!!!

If you have Solaris installation media (Solaris 8, 9, 10 or 11 SPARC version, of course) you can boot into single user with:

Code:

ok> boot cdrom -s

that will allow you to see that the hardware is capable of running Solaris.

If you:

Code:

ok> boot cdrom

it will boot and enter the Solaris install routine.

Your terminal emulator is connected to the SC after boot. If you want to talk to the main processor (after you've 'poweron' and installed Solaris) you can:

Code:

ok> console

to do that and get a login prompt.

When connected to main processor (Solaris) you can type

Code:

#.

to return to the SC.

There are a number of downloadable manuals on the web for the Netra 240 (service, install, admin, etc) so I suggest that you get your paws on those if you haven't already.

EDIT: As pointed out by Gull04 below, the Netra 240 cannot run Solaris 11.