Can't read SS5 serial console with tip

Hi all,

I recently bought 5 SS5s from ebay and currently do not have monitors
or adapters that do 13w3. The systems seem to boot fine and after a
few seconds, theres some harddisk activity meaning the basic
cpu/memory system is working fine. I SHOULD get a serial console.

So I got a DB25 male both ends.. laplink cable.. and have even checked
the individual pinouts (15-2 13-3 etc) with a multimeter to make sure
its not a straightthrough or has missing pins. My Ultra 5 desktop
system has good serial ports, Ive been using them to access some cisco
routers. The internal jumpers in the SS5s and the Ultra 5 are set for
RS232, not RS 445 (or something). So I can assume either the hardware
is all fine, or all the SS5s have bad serial hardware (unlikely?).

Now Ive tried tip and cu, but I have most of my experience with tip.
Ive tried tip -9600 /dev/cua/a which always shows 'connected' and then
nothing. Booting the various SS5s show nothing, zilch, nor does
sending break. Ive checked the tip setup to be 9600,8,n,1 and have
tried all Serial B ports on all the SS5s too (both with and without
hardware flow control), but most of my tests are with Serial A since
that should be the default.

Now the machines do not come with floppy or cdrom drives so I cannot
boot anything blindly, and I cannot use their (SCA1 80-pin) drives in
my Ultra5. I tried to boot them with tcpdump or arpwatch running on
the Ultra5 to see if I can get them to remote-boot, but they emit
nothing. I'm reasonably sure I'm doing something wrong with the serial
settings, but not sure what.

Any ideas/suggestions/hints on what else to check or fiddle with to be
able to read data? I suspect the SS5 port waits for a CD signal while
the Ultra5 ignores it, but I tried changing ttya-ignore-cd=false on
the Ultra5 as well. I checked the standard laplink pinouts for serial
DB-25 cables on the symantec site. I looked around for a jumper to
reset the SS5 ROM (unsuccessful) and tried blind stop-A serial
settings on the SS5. Can a veteran suggest anything short of buying a
Sun monitor?

 

I've build my terminal cable myself and it works great with my SS5. It
is not a null modem cable but a null terminal cable:

<http://www.stokely.com/unix.serial.port.resources/A-B-Ycablepinout.html
#ntdb9.link>

HTH

Greetz
Daniel

 

Adjusting the eepromp settings on your Ultra 5 won't help your
SS5 machines to work. The tty[ab]-ignore-cd setting must be
done on the SS5.

If you can't be certain your cable is providing DCD to the SS5, then
you probably need to reset the SS5's eeprom parameters to factory
defaults. For that you need a Sun keyboard plugged into the SS5's
keyboard connector. You press and hold Stop-N, then power on the
SS5, hold the Stop-N for at least 30 seconds, then power off the
SS5, unplug the keyboard, and power the SS5 back on again.

-Greg

 

Thanks it was my mistake. The cable was male to male db25, and
labelled laplink.. serial cables come in female to female. It was a
parallel laplink cable. After some sleepless soldering last night I
have all the machines booting.

Now for the fancy jumpstart remote mass-installs. Super!