Re: Anyone have working pre-v8 machines?

[Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola%libero.it@localhost>]

Hi,

Mouse wrote:
>> However, I am not running 8.x or 9.x because I am unable to upgrade
>> because I cannot boot any medium.
> ...?  8.x and 9.x don't boot at all?  Not netboot?  Not even if you put
> the data on the disk with another machine?  That's important to know.

To be honest, I did not try netbooting. It is always a hassle, but could
be a nice to test to be sure that the "only" problem is the boot blocks

I did try booting the installer from CD-CDROM, from an external Disk and
also from dumping the installer iso on the swap partition of the
internal HD, a nice trick usually works. I used a MO disk I already used
for installing my SparcStation 4, so... a known working drive.

I did not try yet "installing" from another machine, perhaps I could use
my other sparcstation, put the hard disk in an enclosure and try
installing on it? I avoid that if possiblethouhg, I do not like moving
in-out of hard disks on these old machines, connectors and 50pins are
brittle. When I did this kind of disk testing in my SS10 I broke the
connectors and damaged the cable - back then I was able to find an
expensive replacement. 50pin SCSI are vintage now.

Also, I fear if the installer does not load, why should the installed
system load better?

> 
> What goes wrong when you try?

Data access exception. It appears to be the same issue I had in 2014.

Many years ago I was able to "install" but not boot again and somehow I
tested many boot blocks until I found one that worked and "kept" it.
Until I decided to upgrade again...

You may look in the archives for "SparcStation IPC: Data Access Exception"

> Here my report
> File:boot.388000-2005-02-26 -> boots
> File:boot.388000-2005-04-28 -> boots
> File:boot.388000-2005-06-21 -> boots
> File:boot.388000-2005-07-11 -> boots
> File:boot.388000-2005-08-15 -> boots
> File:boot.388000-2006-01-26 -> boots
> File:boot.388000-2006-11-17 -> fails!
>

I didn't hear back from you here Matthew. Any news about bootblocks?
I reverted the bootblocks to  boot.388000-2006-01-26 and the machine
boots now and I have used it a couple of days.

Izumi reported this error:
http://gnats.netbsd.org/42186

and it should have been fixed since then but perhaps it broke again?

I can attach again and produce a new output with 9.2 one of these evenings.

Riccardo