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Hi I've acquired an E450 system. It power up fine, displays the POST banner,
initialises the RAM, then just sits there doing nothing, almost like it's
waiting trying to detect something to boot from. It's possibly a network boot
attempt but I can't break back to the OBP prompt.

Does anyone know what might cause that behaviour? It does the same thing both
with a PCI framebuffer card and keyboard installed, and with just a serial
terminal connected.

Thanks,

Craig.

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In aus.computers.sun Craig Dewick <cdewick@lios.apana.org.au> may have written:
> Hi I've acquired an E450 system. It power up fine, displays the POST banner,
> initialises the RAM, then just sits there doing nothing, almost like it's
> waiting trying to detect something to boot from. It's possibly a network boot
> attempt but I can't break back to the OBP prompt.

Paste the POST output up to the point it appears to hang?

PD

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Paul Day
Web: http://www.enigma.id.au/

Paul Day <paulspam@bur.st> writes:

>In aus.computers.sun Craig Dewick <cdewick@lios.apana.org.au> may have written:
>> Hi I've acquired an E450 system. It power up fine, displays the POST banner,
>> initialises the RAM, then just sits there doing nothing, almost like it's
>> waiting trying to detect something to boot from. It's possibly a network boot
>> attempt but I can't break back to the OBP prompt.

>Paste the POST output up to the point it appears to hang?

Thanks for the follow-up Paul.

Subsequent to my earlier post, I downloaded the E450 owners guide (PDF from
docs.sun.com), and having read that to check I had the power-up procedure
right I've now set up the machine to do a full diagnostic start-up by
breaking into the OBP as soon as the power-up banner is displayed, turning
on 'diag-switch?' and setting 'diag-level' to 'max', and doing a 'reset-all'
to start it up again. That's revealed a dud memory bank! Module # U1803 is
the one that the POST tests have reported as faulty. I'm not sure if I have
any spare 256 MB modules (haven't had any x7005a kits here for some time
now), but I might just pull the bank out later on today.

I don't know if the dud memory bank should prevent the system getting
further along in the boot process but it looks like when the second bank
failed, the machine just froze up as it wasn't set to diag-mode initially.
It has 2 GB of RAM installed (2 banks of 4 x 256 MB each), but now it has
rebooted automatically, run POST again (somehow it knows there is faulty RAM
bank and is ignoring it), and has this time tried to find something on disk0
to boot off (but it's a blank drive - I did that deliberately).

So it seems to be ok. I put an Expert3D-Lite card in it to act as a display
device since that's what I have on-hand.

Now I'll check that the RAM modules are all seated properly since one or
more might have come out slightly following transport of the system on our
L300 van. If not, I'll arrange to replace the bank with more RAM and try to
test-out exactly which module really is faulty.

Regards,

Craig.

PS. I've posted this message on the SunShack forums at:

http://www.sunshack.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=47

--
Post by Craig Dewick (tm). Web --> "http://lios.apana.org.au/~cdewick".
Email me at "cdewick@poison.lios.apana.org.au". Explore my public-domain Sun
Microsystems technical data archive at "http://www.sunshack.org". Sun Micro
enthusiasts/users webring at "http://n.webring.com/hub?ring=sunmicrosystemsu".

You can also set the key to diags mode for full post diags.

Steve

Steve <stek1961@NOSPAM.mac.com> writes:

>You can also set the key to diags mode for full post diags.

Yes I forgot about that way of doing it. 8-) Thanks for the pointer Steve -
much appreciated.

Going to get the dud RAM bank sorted out today. I've got a quad of
501-3136's here that I might put in it's place for the time being. That'll
reduce the RAM from 4 to 3 GB but at least it'll all be useable in the
meantime.

Regards,

Craig.
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The machine is a SUN E450 with 4 CPU's and 4 GB memory (4 banks o
4X256). A couple of days ago it crashed with a memory failure. Now, n
matter what I do I get a memory error during Boot diagnostics and th
system hangs after Memory Initializing .

I've pulled all PCI cards, and have only 1 CPU and 1 bank of memory
Boot up diags point to SIMM 1903 as a problem. I've switched out thi
memory stick with all of the others. The error always points to thi
memory - as SUSPECT.

I've switched the other 3 CPU's in, 1 at a time, with no change.

I don't have another Main Board to try, but it looks like that might b
the problem.

Documentation states the memory banks must be filled in order. An
chance I can skip this bank and move to the second in order?

Any other ideas?

Thank you,
Woody Sutherland
UC San Dieg

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