From: Stephen Joyce (stephen@physics.unc.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 02 2005 - 22:03:28 EST
I have a number of Sun Ultra 5 and Ultra 10 workstations with failing nvram
batteries. They exhibit the infamous MAC address of ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
problem.
After reading the nvram FAQ at
http://www.squirrel.com/squirrel/sun-nvram-hostid.faq.html , I ordered new
nvram chips from digikey (ST M48T59Y-70PC1).
But I'm having a hellish time getting these to work. After installing
the new chip, the machine still shows "ff" for all fields of Format/Type,
Ethernet, Date, Serial, and Checksum (not unexpected).
I've tried using the instructions in the FAQ above to give the machine its
old MAC and hostid, but the setting doesn't take. "mkpl" gives me the
copyright notice rather than actually setting the values. (I've
successfully using mkp and mkpl when moving nvram chips between machines,
but this is my first experience with NEW chips).
While working on this, I also discovered that the oscillator on these chips
ships turned OFF--presumably to save the battery if the chip sits for years
before being sold.
The Sun displays "Starting real time clock..." on poweron, but the
"watch-clock" command doesn't increment the ticker.
I've tried 2 separate new nvram chips in 2 Ultra 5's and get the same
behavior for all. I think it unlikely that digikey would ship me 2 bad
chips.
Is there something I'm missing to make the MAC & HostID "take" on a brand
new chip? Also, is there some reason that the Sun can't start the RTC on
these chips? Is there perhaps a write-protect bit that must be unset
first???
The datasheet for the chip is located at
http://www.st.com/stonline/books/pdf/docs/7001.pdf . Table 5 shows that
the MSB of 0x1FF9 needs to be reset to 0 to start the clock, but I have no
idea how to do this from the openboot prom (and I don't have access to an
general-purpose eeprom burner).
Basically, if anyone read this far, good! If anyone can provide any advice
above and beyond that in the FAQ at squirrel.com, GREAT! Please contact
me! I'll summarize for the list.
Best, Stephen
_______________________________________________
sunmanagers mailing list
sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Wed Apr 09 2008 - 23:30:17 EDT