On Sat, Jan 13, 2001 at 09:28:21PM +0100, xephox@gmx.net wrote:
> Yes, I was suggested to press the key combo even before the chime started,
> and holding them until I saw the ofw prompt. I've tried that a few times,
> and after a while the screen stays blank. But this is not the way the
> documents say.

Uh... if the screen stays blank, that's perfect.

The 6500s have OpenFirmware 2.0f1, which means they don't default
to using their screen and keyboard for input and output.

Your machine is waiting for input on ttya (the modem port).

After you get a connection there, you can try bringing up the screen
and kbd by doing:

0 > " /bandit/ATY,264GT-B" output
0 > " kbd" input

at the OpenFirmware prompt. (The space after the leading " IS
important!)

If the output setting doesn't work right, switch it back to the
serial line with:

0 > " ttya" output

(just type it blind) and try again. Setting output to " screen", and
" /chaos/control" *might* also work on that model. (I have six 6500s,
but I never remember which is correct and my notes are not at home with
me. " /bandit/ATY,..." is what the FAQ says, and it's probably right.)

If you find this works reliably (which it won't), you can set them
quasi-permanently by doing:

0 > setenv output-device /bandit/ATY,264GT-B
0 > setenv input-device kbd

It's also a really good idea to grab SystemDisk from Apple
(ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/macosxserver/utilities/SystemDisk2.3.1.smi.bin)
on these models. (I haven't had a single 6500 work correctly, or
even the same kind of incorrectly, before running SystemDisk, and,
except for one that may have hardware problems, they're all fine
afterwards.)

> Allen Briggs told me not to hook to the PC parallel port, but to a serial
> port. That might be the problem, and I'll have to wait until I get a
> convertor from parallel to serial next week.

Yeah, you can't go from serial to parallel, and the mac side must be
serial.

It's handy if you have another mac around (even a laptop), but
convertor cables do exist (and are pretty easy to wire together on
your own, really).

       ~ g r @ eclipsed.net