[ On Thu, November 5, 1998 at 08:41:00 (-0800), Rick Copeland wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: PROM Pass: ?
>
> Sorry about the loud text! I feel that a lot of people are not really
> listening. I can't get to the monitor.  After the system checks, the 4/110
> tries to boot from sd(0,0,0) then bounces to the PROM:pass requirement.  I
> have tried to access via ttya in diagnostics mode but after system checks I
> get locked out there as well (clever little PROM).

Ah ha.  That's what I was wondering about....

> I do not have the
> original disk drive that was with the system and so I can't boot into it
> and enter as root to change the eeprom that way.  I have tried to boot a
> disk with Solaris on it I made on my Sparc 2 but it will not boot for some
> reason.

It's probably trying to boot a different filename, perhaps "/vmunix" if
it was running SunOS-4 previously.  I'm pretty sure SunOS-5 will try to
boot "/ufsboot" instead.  You'll have to get the right OS, or at least
the right filename, to match what the PROM is trying to load.

>  I may end up de soldering the chip extracting the data, writing it
> to another (sans the password) and reinstalling it (of course I would put a
> socket in there just in case).

You'll have a heck of a time extracting the data unless you can mimic
the boot environment it expects regardless of what machine it's plugged
into.  You could build a little circuit to attach the chip to a computer
interface of some sort.  I suppose if you're a real cowboy you might try
to swap the chip into an already running system and then use the
"eeprom" command to reprogram it.  Pretty risky though.

However since the Sun 4/1xx machines don't keep the host-id and the MAC
address in the PROM you may as well just toast the whole chip and put in
a brand new one.  It'll be quite easy to re-construct the configuration
information by hand -- far easier than trying to read it from the old
chip.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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