I've recently acquired a Sun A1000 raid box (with no drives).

For initial testing, I made up the necessary serial cable and connected
it to ttya of the Ultra-2 (with Solaris 9), and put in a differential
wide SCSI card into the system, and a differential terminator on the far
side of the A1000

probe-scsi-all sees the box as a number of devices at a single
(selectable) SCSI id. (While the box still has no drives installed.)

The battery took a charge and appears to be happy.

*But* -- when trying to log into the box to examine/tune its
configuration, I was confronted with a request for a password. (At this
time I captured the screen output, including the device serial number.

After trying several passwords and non-passwords, I decided to
see whether I could flush the password from the system.

To this end, I pulled the "Snap-Hat" battery/crystal assembly
from the chip which appears to be clock and NV-RAM (similar to the
monolithic one in the usual Sun machines).

Well ... I may have *changed* the password, but I did not
*clear* it.

However, I *do* appear to have cleared the serial number, which
now shows up as:


================================================== ====================
Press within 5 seconds: <ESC> for SHELL, <BREAK> for baud rate


################################################## #
### ###
### LSI Logic Series 3/4 SCSI RAID Controller ###
### Copyright 1999, LSI Logic Inc. ###
### ###
### Serial number: TN#0000000000000 ###
### ###
################################################## #


Enter password to access shell:
================================================== ====================

FWIW -- the serial number used to be:


================================================== ====================
### Serial number: 1T04470503 ###
================================================== ====================

Any clues as to my next steps?

One would be to purchase the board from a D1000, and use that to
convert this to a "JABOD" (in Sun's terminology). This should actually
suffice for my needs, but the RAID capability would be nicer. (After
getting beyond this, if possible, I then start digging into the
Solaris-9 CD-ROMs, to see whether the program to communicate with this is
present, or whether I will need to purchase this. The cost of that may
still make the conversion to a D1000 the better choice.

Thanks,
DoN.
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In article <cu4di3$78q$1@fuego.d-and-d.com>,
DoN. Nichols <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote:
>I've recently acquired a Sun A1000 raid box (with no drives).

> *But* -- when trying to log into the box to examine/tune its
>configuration, I was confronted with a request for a password. (At this
>time I captured the screen output, including the device serial number.

The A1000 should be configured in-band via the raid manager software suite,
and not via the serial port.

> To this end, I pulled the "Snap-Hat" battery/crystal assembly
>from the chip which appears to be clock and NV-RAM (similar to the
>monolithic one in the usual Sun machines).
>
> Well ... I may have *changed* the password, but I did not
>*clear* it.

Install raid manager 6.22.1 and try to access it.
You probably just made a fancy boat anchor out of your unit.

/wfr
Fredrik
--
Fredrik Lundholm
dol @ ce.chalmers.se

In article <cu51f5$con$1@eol.dd.chalmers.se>,
Fredrik Lundholm <dol@ce.chalmers.se> wrote:
>In article <cu4di3$78q$1@fuego.d-and-d.com>,
>DoN. Nichols <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote:
>>I've recently acquired a Sun A1000 raid box (with no drives).
>
>> *But* -- when trying to log into the box to examine/tune its
>>configuration, I was confronted with a request for a password. (At this
>>time I captured the screen output, including the device serial number.
>
>The A1000 should be configured in-band via the raid manager software suite,
>and not via the serial port.

So why do they have the serial port in the first place? And the
10BaseT as well (or is it 100BaseT)? The ethernet port seems to not be
active at present, but the serial port certainly is. One may presume
that something useful could be done through those.

>> To this end, I pulled the "Snap-Hat" battery/crystal assembly
>>from the chip which appears to be clock and NV-RAM (similar to the
>>monolithic one in the usual Sun machines).
>>
>> Well ... I may have *changed* the password, but I did not
>>*clear* it.
>
>Install raid manager 6.22.1 and try to access it.
>You probably just made a fancy boat anchor out of your unit.

Is that software somewhere in the CD-ROMs of Solaris-9? Or is it
an extra cost package? If the latter, I'm reluctant to invest until I
*know* that the rest will work -- unless it is really inexpensive.

O.K. There is one of the previous version (6.22) on eBay. And
it (so far) looks cheap enough to experiment with.

So far, no luck in finding it in the CD-ROM set of supplemental
software.

And if all else fails, the unit can at least be turned into a
simple D1000 with a board swap -- so it should be possible to utilize it
still, just with software RAID instead of hardware.

Thanks much,
DoN.
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In article <cu66sc$psd$1@fuego.d-and-d.com>,
DoN. Nichols <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote:

> Is that software somewhere in the CD-ROMs of Solaris-9? Or is it
>an extra cost package? If the latter, I'm reluctant to invest until I
>*know* that the rest will work -- unless it is really inexpensive.
>
> O.K. There is one of the previous version (6.22) on eBay. And
>it (so far) looks cheap enough to experiment with.

Raid Manager is free, download it from www.sun.com/downloads.
Check also that you have the latest Raid Manager patch from
www.sunsolve.com. Raid Manager comes with firmware updates
aswell but check the documentation on docs.sun.com for operation.

Raid Manager is not on any Solaris CD or supplement.

/wfr
Fredrik
--
Fredrik Lundholm
dol @ ce.chalmers.se

In article <cu6akb$t5k$1@eol.dd.chalmers.se>,
Fredrik Lundholm <dol@ce.chalmers.se> wrote:
>In article <cu66sc$psd$1@fuego.d-and-d.com>,
>DoN. Nichols <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote:
>
>> Is that software somewhere in the CD-ROMs of Solaris-9? Or is it
>>an extra cost package? If the latter, I'm reluctant to invest until I
>>*know* that the rest will work -- unless it is really inexpensive.
>>
>> O.K. There is one of the previous version (6.22) on eBay. And
>>it (so far) looks cheap enough to experiment with.
>
>Raid Manager is free, download it from www.sun.com/downloads.

Aha -- that is good news, and saves me from playing the eBay
game for an older version. It is now all downloaded.

>Check also that you have the latest Raid Manager patch from
>www.sunsolve.com. Raid Manager comes with firmware updates
>aswell but check the documentation on docs.sun.com for operation.

Will do.

>Raid Manager is not on any Solaris CD or supplement.

That explains why I did not find it. :-)

Thanks for the help,
DoN.

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Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

DoN. Nichols <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote:
>>The A1000 should be configured in-band via the raid manager software suite,
>>and not via the serial port.
>
> So why do they have the serial port in the first place? And the

The serial port is used for (very, very) low-level stuff. Even if you did
have the password (and no, i'm not going to tell you what it is it'd
be fairly useless to you as the interface is not exactly user-friendly...

> 10BaseT as well (or is it 100BaseT)? The ethernet port seems to not be
> active at present, but the serial port certainly is. One may presume
> that something useful could be done through those.

The ethernet port is really there for "future enhancement" which never
happened. It's not not connected to anything.

Scott

In article <1108374813.989825@docbert>,
Scott Howard <scott@hunterlink.net.au> wrote:
>DoN. Nichols <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote:
>>>The A1000 should be configured in-band via the raid manager software suite,
>>>and not via the serial port.
>>
>> So why do they have the serial port in the first place? And the
>
>The serial port is used for (very, very) low-level stuff. Even if you did
>have the password (and no, i'm not going to tell you what it is it'd
>be fairly useless to you as the interface is not exactly user-friendly...

Things such as re-establishing the original serial number which
I blew away by removing the SnapHat battery? :-) I've got the original
serial number saved, and somehow doubt that things will be happy with
the new serial number of "TN#0000000000000"

>> 10BaseT as well (or is it 100BaseT)? The ethernet port seems to not be
>> active at present, but the serial port certainly is. One may presume
>> that something useful could be done through those.
>
>The ethernet port is really there for "future enhancement" which never
>happened. It's not not connected to anything.

O.K. That explains why it doesn't show any activity.

Thanks,
DoN.
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Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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I'm sort of in the same boat: recently purchased a used A1000 and am
trying to get it to work. So far probe-scsi-all doesn't seem to show
the device at all. Can this happen because the battery is bad? I
kind of doubt it would survive this long; it blinks when I give power
to the box. Don mentioned his "took a charge" -- should I just leave
it powered on for a while? I have a terminator connected and the
light is on. This is connected to a Netra t1; I upgraded the
Openboot to 4.0 just in case. Any ideas?

In article <421b5b1a$1_5@alt.athenanews.com>,
jmhayes <jmhayes@speakeasy-dot-net.no-spam.invalid> wrote:
>I'm sort of in the same boat: recently purchased a used A1000 and am
>trying to get it to work. So far probe-scsi-all doesn't seem to show
>the device at all. Can this happen because the battery is bad?

Probably not, as it is supposed to work with no battery present.

What kind of SCSI host adaptor do you have connected to it? It
should be a *differential* SCSI adaptor, not a single-ended one. The
same applies to the terminator.

With no disk drives present, it still showed up as seven SCSI
devices on a single IP -- with the differential SCSI host adaptor and
terminator installed. (I happened to have a Differential 68-pin SCSI
host adaptor on hand, so I could install it and test it.) Note that
when connected to the single-ended 68-pin connector on my Ultra-2, it
locked things up so "probe-scsi-all" could not see *any* SCSI devices.

> I
>kind of doubt it would survive this long; it blinks when I give power
>to the box. Don mentioned his "took a charge" -- should I just leave
>it powered on for a while?

Try that. I had it up for about 24 hours, and then was able to
measure a little over 6V on the output -- but it did not take too long
without power to drop down to 4V, as one of the three cells is certainly
pretty poor. With the battery module unplugged from the system, you
should be able to measure the voltage. Only two of the four connector
pins actually have pins in them. The other two are unused. Look into
it, and you can see which two (diagonally opposite) ones actually have
pins, and you can reach in with your voltmeter's probes to check it.

I'm not going to spend the money for a fully working battery
until I am sure that I can use the system with the downloaded package
from Sun.

> I have a terminator connected and the
>light is on. This is connected to a Netra t1; I upgraded the
>Openboot to 4.0 just in case. Any ideas?

Is that the "Netra t 1100" (page CPU-58 -- CPU-61 in my FEH), or
the "Netra t 1120/1125" (pages CPU-62 -- CPU-65), or the "Netra t
1400/1405 (pages CPU-66 -- CPU-69). Looking at the FEH descriptions, it
looks as though all of these have single-ended 68-pin SCSI, not
differential.

Looking though the SCSI section of the FEH, it looks as though
the part which you need to talk to that A1000 (or the D1000, for that
mater) is described as "Dual Differential Ultra/Wide SCSI", with
identifiers of "375-0006", "375-0014", and "540-3980". (The last of
those shows "Netra ft 1800 FRU -- w/375-0006").

I hope that this helps.
DoN.

P.S. *Don't* try removing the "Snap-Hat" to clear the firmware
password. It causes it to lose track of what its own serial
number is.

P.P.S. You can (and I *have*) install the board from the D1000, to
turn into "JBOD" (Just a Box of Disks) -- but that also needs
the differential SCSI host adaptor to talk to it. That board
has Sun part number 375-0008, and I was able to find one on eBay
at a reasonable price, so others will probably show up over time,
if you can't use the RAID features of the A1000. The D1000 does
not need the battery -- indeed it has no provisions for the
battery.

At least with the D1000 card, I can talk to drives in the
system.
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Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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