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Hi

I received a Sun E3000 and have a slight problem at boot time. It's a
hardware failure, but I'm unable at this stage to figure it out
myself.

I'd like to state that it does manage to boot and load the OS (Solaris
9) at which point I can logon (via terminal), see all disks and work
'normally'.

The boot messages are:

Hardware Power ON
3,0>ERROR: TEST=NVRAM Devices,SUBTEST=M48T59 (TOD) Init ID=8.1
3,0>Component under test: Board 16 Firehose Bus
3,0>TODC battery is low bit set
3,0>ERROR: TEST=NVRAM Devices,SUBTEST=M48T59 (TOD) Init ID=8.1
3,0>Component under test: Board 16 Firehose Bus
3,0>TODC battery is low bit set
4-slot Sun Enterprise 3000, No Keyboard
OpenBoot 3.2.30, 1792 MB memory installed, Serial #8630662.
Copyright 2002 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved
Ethernet address 8:0:20:83:b1:86, Host ID: 8083b186.
....... blah blah blah ........

Does anyone have an idea of what exactly the problem is?

Thank you.

On Mar 22, 7:00 am, dejongh.pie...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi
>
> I received a Sun E3000 and have a slight problem at boot time. It's a
> hardware failure, but I'm unable at this stage to figure it out
> myself.
>
> I'd like to state that it does manage to boot and load the OS (Solaris
> 9) at which point I can logon (via terminal), see all disks and work
> 'normally'.
>
> The boot messages are:
>
> Hardware Power ON
> 3,0>ERROR: TEST=NVRAM Devices,SUBTEST=M48T59 (TOD) Init ID=8.1
> 3,0>Component under test: Board 16 Firehose Bus
> 3,0>TODC battery is low bit set
> 3,0>ERROR: TEST=NVRAM Devices,SUBTEST=M48T59 (TOD) Init ID=8.1
> 3,0>Component under test: Board 16 Firehose Bus
> 3,0>TODC battery is low bit set
> 4-slot Sun Enterprise 3000, No Keyboard
> OpenBoot 3.2.30, 1792 MB memory installed, Serial #8630662.
> Copyright 2002 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved
> Ethernet address 8:0:20:83:b1:86, Host ID: 8083b186.
> ...... blah blah blah ........
>
> Does anyone have an idea of what exactly the problem is?
>
> Thank you.

The NVRAM battery is dying on the clock board of your UE3000. "Board
16" is always the clock board on Enterprise-class servers, so a
similar message with any other board number would point to an NVRAM
failure on an I/O board in the indicated centerplane slot.
Unfortunately, the NVRAMs on both the clock boards and I/O boards are
soldered permanently to the board assembly, unlike the replaceable
chips found on the system boards of Sun workstations.

If you replace the entire clock board (501-2975 for 83MHz bus,
501-4286 for 100MHz--match it against the failed part), the POST
problem will be solved. However the NVRAM contents, including the
hostid, will still be mismatched against the NVRAMs on the existing I/
O board(s), which is not good (software with hostid-based licensing
like Vx products will break). The new clock board must be synchronized
to an existing I/O board with the following OBP command:

ok (ioboard# in hex) copy-io-board-tod-to-clock-tod

A UE3000 doesn't have enough slots to have to worry about hex
conversion (1-3-5-7-9), so the appropriate number printed on the
chassis for any I/O board's slot should simply be inserted into the
above syntax ("1 copy-io-board..."), and you should be all set.

One final note: take special care not to confuse the "copy-clock-tod-
to-io-boards" command with the above after a clock board is replaced,
or you'll find yourself contacting software vendors for updated
licenses, reconfiguring upstream ethernet switch port security due to
changed MAC addresses, etc.

Hope that helps,

-A