Hello,

I have recently bought a second-hand IPX with no RAM. I do not know
whether the NVRAM chip works or not. I do not know whether the two SIMM
chips I put in it work or not. Nevertheless, I hooked up a Sun type 6
keyboard and an Iiyama 17" monitor (through a VGA adaptor, plugged into
the onboard IPX framebuffer).

When I boot the machine, I observe the following behaviour:
** the keyboard leds mutate briefly into a christmas tree;
** after a few seconds, the leds stop blinking, and then some video
signal is sent to the monitor;
** the monitor cannot handle the video mode: it complains about an
horizontal frequency of 71.6 kHz and a vertical frequency of 76 Hz;
the horizontal frequency is out of range (and yet the monitor is ten
years younger than the IPX, and was not last year Iiyama's cheapest
model);
** when I type 'n<return>reset<return>', the machine reboots (on the 't'
stroke, and not if I type 'zoinx' or something else like that).

From what I found on various FAQs, the solution should be the following:
on boot, I type:
'n<return>setenv output-device screen:r1152x900x66<return>reset<return>'
so that the IPX should switch to a mode which my monitor will handle,
and reboot into that new mode.

However, this does not work. The station reboots, but uses again the
1152x900x76 mode.


Therefore I have a few questions:
** Am I missing something ? Is the default frame buffer resolution
modifiable on the IPX ?
** Does a setting such as the default screen resolution would survive
a software 'reset' if the NVRAM battery is dead ?
** Has the amount of RAM available anything to do with that matter
(I mean: if my RAM is faulty, will the machine boot at all and let me
type in a 'reset' command ?)
** The Sun Frame Buffer FAQ mentions a "monitor sense code" which may
modify the video mode used to boot the machine with a GX frame buffer
(which is supposedly what I have on my IPX); how may I force another
sense code into the machine, provided that I have a SVGA monitor with
an adapter ?


Thanks in advance for any information,


	--Thomas Pornin