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 Maybe the case sticker is outdated.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.

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:

Dear Hicks,

Downloaded all the manuals about Netra, ALOM, etc. Very superficial, lightly touches on things. But still explained a few points like the DB9 serial port. That indeed was not intended to help with ALOM access. Just a regular serial port for after the OS boots, not a management port at all.

Now as I wrote I can start the leaf blower fan inside with just a "poweron" command. To start individual sub-components (FRUs), I tried " poweron {fru} " commands. For motherboard ı tried "poweron MB", "poweron MOTHERBOARD", and "poweron MB.SEEPROM", for SCSI disks I tried "poweron SCSI", "poweron ENC", "poweron ENC.SEEPROM", does not like these names, declares invalid. When I try "poweron PS1", or "removefru PS1", the SC does NOT declare these name are invalid but says they are NOT present!

Now this is fun indeed! ıf we have no Power Supplies present how the heck are we talking to you Mr. SC?

In summary I need to supply power to the DVD drive to boot anything. I looked inside the DVD bay, there indeed seems to be socket there intact. Since the HDD power light comes on and goes out, I think we just need the correct FRU name for the SCSI subsystem.

And here is a sample of my SC action logs below:

Code:

ALOM BOOTMON v1.5.4
ALOM Build Release: 008
Reset register: e0000000 EHRS ESRS LLRS


ALOM POST 1.0


TTYD - Internal Loopback Test, PASSED.

Memory Data Lines Test
Memory Data Lines Test, PASSED.

Memory Address Lines Test
  Slide address bits to test open address lines
  Test for shorted address lines
Memory Address Lines Test, PASSED.

Memory Parity Test
Memory Parity Test, PASSED.

Boot Sector FLASH CRC Test
Boot Sector FLASH CRC Test, PASSED.



Return to Boot Monitor for Handshake
ALOM POST 1.0
   Status = 00007fff

Returned from Boot Monitor and Handshake



Clearing Memory Cells
Memory Clean Complete


Loading the runtime image...
SC Alert: CRITICAL ALARM is set

SC Alert: SC System booted.


Sun(tm) Advanced Lights Out Manager 1.5.4 ()



Full VxDiag Tests

BASIC TOD TEST
  Read the TOD Clock:        SAT JAN 01 00:00:14 2000
  Wait, 1 - 3 seconds
  Read the TOD Clock:        SAT JAN 01 00:00:16 2000
BASIC TOD TEST, PASSED

ETHERNET CPU LOOPBACK TEST
  50 BYTE PACKET   - a 0 in field of 1's.
  50 BYTE PACKET   - a 1 in field of 0's.
  900 BYTE PACKET  - pseudo-random data.
ETHERNET CPU LOOPBACK TEST, PASSED

Full VxDiag Tests - PASSED



    Status summary  -  Status = 7FFF

       VxDiag    -          -  PASSED
       POST      -          -  PASSED
       LOOPBACK  -          -  PASSED

       I2C       -          -  PASSED
       EPROM     -          -  PASSED
       FRU PROM  -          -  PASSED

       ETHERNET  -          -  PASSED
       MAIN CRC  -          -  PASSED
       BOOT CRC  -          -  PASSED

       TTYD      -          -  PASSED
       TTYC      -          -  PASSED
       MEMORY    -          -  PASSED
       MPC850    -          -  PASSED


sc>
sc> showlogs

Log entries since JAN 01 00:00:15
----------------------------------
JAN 01 00:00:15 : 00060021: "CRITICAL ALARM is set"
JAN 01 00:00:15 : 00060003: "SC System booted."
JAN 01 00:00:24 : 00060000: "SC Login: User admin Logged on."
sc> poweron
Warning: the poweron command is being ignored because the password for admin is not set.
Setting password for admin.
New password: *********

Re-enter new password: *********

sc> poweron
sc> showlogs

Log entries since JAN 01 00:00:15
----------------------------------
JAN 01 00:00:15 : 00060021: "CRITICAL ALARM is set"
JAN 01 00:00:15 : 00060003: "SC System booted."
JAN 01 00:00:24 : 00060000: "SC Login: User admin Logged on."
JAN 01 00:01:19 : 00040001: "SC Request to Power On Host."
sc> poweroff
Host system power is already off
sc>