sun e250: just getting garbage from ttya, get proper login text from rsc

[brokndodge]

I found an old e250 on the side of the road. someone had placed it out as trash. i want to play with this new toy, perhaps set up a lan file server for media. i intend to install debian on it. that's what i'm most familiar with.

anyway, the machine is headless, no keyboard, and i don't have enough money to purchase a sun type 4/5 keyboard. so i am trying to gain serial access thru ttya. i built a null modem cable. the cable works fine with the built in rsc (i get the rsc post and a login request). but when hooked up to ttya all i get thru hyperterminal, minicom or gtkterm is garbage. lots and lots of weird ascii characters. i'm sure my home grown cable works because rsc displays correctly. all terminals are set 9600,8n1,no flow control. when using the rsc connection i do get full echo of what i type. i'm pretty sure my cable is put together right.

i tried removing the rsc "card" (which is really less of a card and more like expansion ports with a ribbon cable going to the main board) and hooking the null modem cable to ttya, still just garbage on hyperterminal. i read more than one place that once the rsc card is removed the e250 should default to ttya. that didn't help me tho. i even tried working thru the garbage and hitting ctrl-break, ctrl-b in gtkterm. once or twice i was fast enough to get what might have been an ok prompt written in garbage. so i tried typing a few commands i found posted on this forums and others, but i never made any progress on that front.

I built my cable off the following chart:

Connect Pin to Pin on each end.

25-pin 25-pin
2 --------------- 3
3 --------------- 2
4 --------------- 5
5 --------------- 4
7 --------------- 7
6 ---+
+----------- 20
8 ---+
+--- 6
20 ----------+
+--- 8


obtained from this website: Serial Console on Solaris

i'm using a db25 to db9 converter to connect to my windows laptop or linux desktop.

this machine being foreign to me, i have no interest in trying to get rsc working, i am perfectly happy using ttya. Does anyone have any ideas on where i went wrong?

[polypagan]

Can you look at the characters you're receiving in hex or octal? You may be able to decipher (not easy, I know) what's wrong. Can you look at 'uart' errors like framing and overrun?

Since you're getting characters to flow, you must have the wired data and handshake wires correct. The problem (It seems to me) can only be baud rate, parity, framing (stop bits), etc.

Of course, I am sure it has occurred to you that this may be why it was IN THE TRASH!

best of luck and let us know!

[fmiller01]

You are close to having this thing working. You have to match the speed, number of data bits, parity and number of stop bits for both pieces to understand each other. If you are displaying garbage text, the port speed is correct, but the parity/number of data bits is incorrect. Try changing fron 8N0 (8 data bits, no parity, no stop bits) to 7E1 (7 data bits, even parity, 1 stop bit). or vice - versa. If the speed did not match, you would see nothing at all.

[brokndodge]

it wasn't my first thought, but the thought did occur to me that someone couldn't make it work so they threw it away, well if anyone could throw an e250. hehehe. thing is my current 64 bit dell came out of the trash, while still under warranty from dell. the only thing wrong with it was the power supply, which after transfering the warranty, dell happily replaced and even offered me a tech to do the replacement. free of charge.

i did check baudrate. tried all connect settings from 8n0 thru 7e1. i tried "5,6,7,8","none,even,odd","1,2" and all variations of it. tho at 7e1 the garbage turned to some type of oriental characterset on gtkterm. I figured that wasn't the language the server is setup for because rsc post's on english.

I can turn the output to hex, but I have no idea how to decifer it. i did locate what apears to be a type 4 keyboard on ebay. I'll post if I can manage to make that purchase. Until then, I am willing to entertain any other ideas. I really am not that familiar with Sun equipment. Tho I have learned quit a bit in the last few days.

[MrPatol]

i tried removing the rsc "card" (which is really less of a card and more like expansion ports with a ribbon cable going to the main board) and hooking the null modem cable to ttya, still just garbage on hyperterminal. i read more than one place that once the rsc card is removed the e250 should default to ttya. that didn't help me tho. i even tried working thru the garbage and hitting ctrl-break, ctrl-b in gtkterm. once or twice i was fast enough to get what might have been an ok prompt written in garbage. so i tried typing a few commands i found posted on this forums and others, but i never made any progress on that front.

Hi, at OK prompt (a kind of sparc bios) you can query the serial settings just typing

ok printenv

and you can change them by

ok setenv

(be careful !!!)

You can type "help" to get possible commands and "help <command>" to get help on specific command.

other useful commands are:

ok banner
ok boot
ok boot cdrom (if you want to reinstall)

few doc here (i'm not allowed to post URLs, replace alle <dot> with . and <sla> with /)
www<dot>shrubbery<dot>net<sla>~heas<sla>sun-feh-2_1<sla>General<sla>OBP<dot>html
dlc<dot>sun<dot>com<sla>pdf<sla>805-7228<sla>805-7228<dot>pdf

About strange chars into console if they come out during/after boot maybe is simply a badly configured daemon trowing info on console, but it just screw up the display, if you are typing a command you can continue witout being interrupted.

Cheers, MrPatol

[brokndodge]

ok prompt doesn't say ok, it's dificult to figure out which character is the prompt. ctrl-break han't been consistant at getting me anything that looks like it could be a prompt. i did find a keyboard for $5 plus shipping, but it hasn't shipped yet.

with all the ice here today, i'll be playing with my 250 most of the day. i'll post back if i make any progress.

[MrPatol]

On the Sun keyboard you press together [stop]+[a] to get into OK prompt. If you get a '>' prompt, enter 'n' command.

Happy icy hacking day!

[brokndodge]

keyboard still hasn't arrived. as for the prompt, all i get is garbage on ttya, there are more than enough docs out there to figure out what to do once i get either > or ok>. problem is getting that prompt. rsc displays fine, but without the login info, there's nothing i can do from there. can't do an os install from rsc anyway. i'm hoping that once the keyboard arrives i can get in and fix the settings that are causing garbage to display on ttya. that's the only thing left to try, unless there are other ideas out there.

i'm not getting anything that even resembles a promt. just garbage on ttya.