On Sun, 13 Jul 1997, Geoff Adams wrote:

: Btw, you can set the values in your NVRAM after you turn the machine
: on, and then you'll be able to boot.  Since the NVRAM is just regular
: RAM with a battery backup, it will keep the values you feed it until
: you power down the machine.  Of course, the best thing is to buy a new
: NVRAM chip for $15 to $20.
: 
: For full details, have a look at the NVRAM FAQ,
: 
:    http://www.squirrel.com/squirrel/sun-nvram-hostid.faq.html

I can summarize the NVRAM FAQ into a very short set of commands for just
about any sun4m or sun4c architecture machine with the 'new command mode'
(OpenBoot 2.x+) available.  I use this at home, because I'm too cheap to pay
$20 for a chip and my machine stays up 24h/7d anyway.  Let the machine boot
and go through diagnostics, then do the following commands in 'new command
mode' ('ok' prompt): 

ok setenv diag-switch? false
ok 0 f mkp
ok 8 0 20 AA BB CC AABBCC mkpl
^D^R
ok

Note: AA, BB, and CC are user-settable octets; these are the last 3 bytes of
the Ethernet address.  On some NVRAM chips, this is printed on the label. 
When you hit ^D^R (control-D control-R, no ENTER at the end of the line),
you should NOT see a Sun copyright message.  If you do, repeat the 'mkp' and
'mkpl' lines, replacing the '0 f mkp' with 'X f mkp'--something random for
X, which invalidates the checksum to ensure that 'mkpl' works.

=====
== Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Business tv@iag.net) Foo-bar-baz! ==
== System administrator/technician, Internet Access Group, Orlando Florida ==
== Dialups in Orange, Volusia, Lake, Osceola counties - http://www.iag.net ==