Re: E450 stuff

[Christopher Sean Hilton <chris%vindaloo.com@localhost>]

On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 08:03:53AM -0400, Nick Holland wrote:
> Johan SANCHEZ wrote:
> > On Fri, 23 May 2008 11:08:32 -0400
> > Christopher Sean Hilton <chris%vindaloo.com@localhost> wrote:
> > 

[ snip ]

> > 
> > Can i ask what is the problem you are experiencing with this ?
> > what version of OBP are you using and what OBSD version did you
> > tried ?
> > 
> > Johan
> > 
> 
> I do believe you will find OpenBSD will Just Work, and bsd.mp
> should spin up all four processors.
> I seem to recall there was some work done relatively recently on
> the sensors on an E450, and one usually has to be fully functional
> on a system before you worry much about the sensors. :)
> 
> HOWEVER...  IF you have only worked with PCs, Sun systems are
> different.  Also, the average E450 has sucked a lot of dust through
> its CDROM drive, and functional SCSI CDROM drives are relatively
> rare in most people's spare parts pile.  Fortunately, Suns offer a
> lot of other options for bootstrapping the system, but none of the
> rest are something the average PC user has ever done before.
> 
> But man, E450s are big.  But I'm sure you have noticed that. :)
> 
> Nick.
> 

Thanks,

My first crack at this box was probably 2 years ago, perhaps more. I
do know that the sparc64 MP code was reasonably new in NetBSD at the
time. I didn't really try to hard but OpenBSD (unknown version)
wouldn't boot and NetBSD (2.0, 2.1, 3.0) would all stall at various
places in the boot process. Since I couldn't get Stop-A to bring the
machine back to the OpenBoot prompt reliably I figured that it was a
bad mainboard. I requested another and received one with 2 300MHz
UltraSparc II processors. That's where I went wrong. I installed one
of the 400MHz processors onto the "new" mainboard and attempted to
boot and got nowhere.

I don't claim to be very versed in Sun hardware. If I can make it boot
off of the CD-ROM then I can generally make it work. I can netboot
Intel Machines with PXE ok. I hate floppy drives...

On the advice of a friend who knows Sun Hardware much better than I I
put the 2 300MHZ CPU's back on the second mainboard and the machine is
happily installing NetBSD 4.0 right now. It's still not recognizing
all the disk drives that I have in it but at least it installs now.

Once I can get it to install I'm happy because I don't like giving
away junk. Residential electricity in New England is currently $0.16 /
kWh which means that this machine would probably cost more than $30.00
/ month to run 24/7. It will never be a main line production machine
for me but after successfully installing NetBSD and OpenBSD on it I
can report that it works...

-- Chris

-- 
-- 
Chris Hilton                                 chilton-at-vindaloo-dot-com
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                "All I was doing was trying to get home from work!"
                                                 -- Rosa Parks