On 12-Mar-98 George Coulouris wrote:
> Here's a transcript of what happens when I try to netboot my SLC:
> (netbooting from a pc running i386/1.3)

I'm netbooting my ELC from my i386/1.3 box.

> cpu0 at mainbus0: MB86900/1A or L64801 @ 20 MHz, WTL3170/2 FPU
> cpu0: 64K byte write-through, 16 bytes/line, sw flush: cache enabled
> memreg0 at mainbus0 ioaddr 0x
> 
> At this point, the machine freezes. If I have it hooked up via ttya, the
> Sparc's screen goes black, and all i/o on ttya ceases. If I have the
> keyboard plugged in and am using the onboard console, the video goes
> wacky and loses sync.

I have no keyboard for my ELC, and if I boot with the console on the
serial port, the same video problem happens. If I 

setenv output-device screen
setenv input-device  ttya

and boot, the video does not go wacky, but the kernel switches all input
to ttya.
 
> When I first power on the machine, I get something along the lines of:
> 
> 3e0 bad 3e0 bad 3e0 bad
> 
> while it's testing the cache. Then it goes ahead an enables the cache
> anyway, and then starts to boot.
> 
> Is the cache what's causing the lockup? If so, can I either disable it
> or replace it?

I believe the cache is sodered on the mainboard. I seem to remember a Sparc
1 uttering the same message when its battery-backed RAM that holds the
MAC/machine ID/et al dies. 

        Nate