Tag: sparc

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Setting/resetting a MAC address on a Sun workstation with dead NVRAM battery using OBP (Open Boot PROM)

I had this post in draft since 2019 when I picked up a Sun Ultra 60 from ebay and needed to reset it’s MAC address because the NVAM battery had died. I never posted it apparently, probably because I only had to do it once and then forgot about it.

I had to give up the Ultra 60 when we moved from the US back to the UK – if you’ve every come across one of these you’ll know how heavy they are and I couldn’t justify the shipping costs (besides, I already had a Power Mac G5 and a Mac Pro 3,1 going in the container, which were heavy enough).

I saw a FB post recently that someone had a palette of Sun Ultra 5 ‘s for £50, so after working out some shipping, I now have an Ultra 5.

I previously followed instructions I bookmarked here but looks like that article is not up anymore, but it is archived on Wayback Machine here.

The relevant part I needed were the steps at the Open Boot Prompt to reset the MAC and System address:

01 0 mkp
80 1 mkp  < = System type.  For sun4u arch 80.  For sun4m arch - 72
08 2 mkp  <= Sun AUI is is always 08:00:20, which are the next three values for MAC
0  3 mkp
20 4 mkp
01 5 mkp <= 01:02:03 next values to append for your MAC, e.g. to generate 08:00:20:01:02:03 as MAC
02 6 mkp
03 7 mkp
0 8 mkp
0 9 mkp
0 a mkp
0 b mkp
c0 c mkp <= next 2 values are your System ID, e.g. c0:ff:ee
ff d mkp
ee e mkp
0 f 0 do i idprom@ xor loop f mkp  <= Calculates the checksum

The Gentoo wiki also has a great reference for OBP prompt commands here.

Notes on setting the MAC address also here and here.

I don’t have VGA monitor for the Ultra 5 yet, or a Sun keyboard or mouse, so I’m booting via a serial terminal right now (using my VT132) – first two steps scrolled off the screen:

After the above steps, reset-all, then your boot command depending where you are booting from,

boot disk

or 

boot net
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For no particular reason, a Sparc workstation is on it’s way – part 2: it arrived!

It arrived a couple of days earlier than expected, ahead of the other multiple parts that I needed (keyboard, mouse, scsi disk etc).

It’s a bit grubby and scratched up, but not that bad for an older machine:

It’s incredibly heavy though, wow, it must way at least 60 pounds.

Inside looks like there is the Creator 3D graphics card, and a SunPCI card (more on that later).

I have a Sun5c keyboard and mouse, so plugging them in, attaching a monitor and powering on …. nothing.

Uh oh.

I started to go down the path of running the diags over the serial connection, and using my Atari ST as a terminal, but before I got to far with that I though I should check basics and make sure everything is well seated.

Turns out both cards were only half in their slots. One more try, but still nothing. Next, pulled the CPU board out and gave it a blow and then reinserted…. power on, fans running, diags run and we have a banner:

Next up, waiting until Monday for my SCSI disk to arrive with disk sled, and then we’ll start a Solaris install!

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For no particular reason, a Sparc workstation is on it’s way

I was shopping for one of these on ebay:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation_20

By Caroline Ford – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1504020

But then got caught up on the idea that an Ultra 5 with IDE disk support might be a better idea:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_5/10

By Liftarn – https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2094130

After a lively discussion in the Facebook Vintage Unix Machines group about the pros and cons of older Sparcstations, Ultra 1 and 2, vs Ultra 5/10, I decided to shop for an Ultra 1 or 2. I made an offer on one but didn’t get it. And then I decided to go for an Ultra 60 since it was cheaper than anything else I could find, although in a unknown working condition, other than ‘it powers on’. So when it turns up it will be a learning experience to see if it’s actually in working condition or not.

I believe from photos from the ebay listing that there’s a SunPCI card in there, so that will be interesting to play with, and also the Creator 3D graphics card.

On my shopping list of needed parts:

  • a Sun Type 5 keyboard and mouse (with Sun mini DIN connector)
  • a 13W3 video to VGA adapter
  • an SCA SCSI disk
  • possible future purchase, a SCSI2SD adapter

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Installing Solaris 2.6 under QEMU

I’ve been looking at picking up a used Sun Sparcstation from eBay. It occurred to me that I’ve never installed an early version of Solaris before, so wondered if I could give it a try under QEMU since it’s emulates different hardware, including Sparc.

There’s an awesome step by step guide on Adafruit that takes you precisely each step to get Solairs installed un QEMU. You can follow the steps in their article here, so I won’t repeat all the steps here.

The key steps before you get to the install are creating a disk image:

qemu-img create -f qcow2 sparc.qcow2 9663676416

and then booting with the Solaris iso image as the cdrom and the disk image attached:

qemu-system-sparc -M SS-5 -m 128 -drive file=sparc.qcow2,bus=0,unit=0,media=disk -drive file=solaris_2.6_598_sparc.iso,bus=0,unit=2,media=cdrom,readonly=on

After this point it’s following through the steps in the install. From the openboot ok prompt, start the boot from the cd image:

boot cdrom:d -vs

-vs here boots to a single user mode where you can format the disk first, before rebooting again without the -vs option and continuing with the install. The install will not continue if it detects the qemu disk is not formatted yet.

The commands needed to initialised the disk:

drvconfig
disks
format

From the Adafruit article, here’s the params for the format you need:

Specify disk (enter its number): 0
Specify disk type (enter its number): 16
Enter number of data cylinders: 16381
...defaults are fine here...
Enter number of heads: 16
...
Enter number of data sectors/track: 63
...
Enter disk type name (remember quotes): Qemu9G

Here’s qemu booting up for the first time:

Here’s the Solaris installer starting up:

After the install had completed, here’s the rather impressive for it’s time CDE desktop:

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