AX1105 (Netra X1-alike) booting from cdrom problems...

[Patrick Giagnocavo 717-201-3366]

Would like to have some help from the list on this.  Have spent way too
much time on this already, and apparently Sun no longer has any info
about this motherboard on their site (unless you pay them).

The problem I have is that I am not able to get known-good CDROMs or
DVDROM drives to be seen by the on-board IDE controller.

When I probe using probe-ide, they are seen and recognized.

But when I try to actually boot from media, I get nothing.

Using the built-in cdrom devalias I get:

boot cdrom

Boot device: /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@d/cdrom@2,0:f  File and args:

Can't open boot device

When I figure that perhaps the slave on 1st IDE channel is cdrom@1:f
instead I get:

k boot /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@d/cdrom@1:f
Boot device: /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@d/cdrom@1:f  File and args:
Can't read disk label.
Can't open disk label package

Can't open boot device


This seems to indicate that the devalias is wrong but sometimes I get
"Can't open boot device" and other times I get the above three lines of
"Can't" instead.

result from probe-ide:

ok probe-ide
   Device 0  ( Primary Master )
           ATA Model: Maxtor 6E040L0

   Device 1  ( Primary Slave )
          Removable ATAPI Model: COMPAQ  DVD-ROM GDR8160B

   Device 2  ( Secondary Master )
          Not Present

   Device 3  ( Secondary Slave )
          Not Present


I am probably doing something braindead.  What is it?

--Patrick
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[Patrick Giagnocavo 717-201-3366]

On Jan 6, 2007, at 7:19 PM, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:

> Would like to have some help from the list on this.  Have spent way too
> much time on this already, and apparently Sun no longer has any info
> about this motherboard on their site (unless you pay them).
>
> The problem I have is that I am not able to get known-good CDROMs or
> DVDROM drives to be seen by the on-board IDE controller.
>

The mistake I made was in assuming that even a CDROM from an Ultra5
would work in this AX1105 board.  My guess is that since the mobo was
designed for OEM integration, the base OBP etc. is pretty barebones or
was not tested against as many peripherals.

After buying a spare DVDROM drive and putting it in my PC running
Solaris 10, then running setup_install_server and add_install_client,
then net booting the system, everything *appears* to be installing
properly.

And now, I can netboot-and-install any sun4u box I want, which is a
nice bonus.

--Patrick
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[Magnus-15]

Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
> The problem I have is that I am not able to get known-good CDROMs or
> DVDROM drives to be seen by the on-board IDE controller.

I doubt this is your problem but I'll throw it out there.

On my X1 I had a CDROM plugged in, it was recognized, but booting off of
it would not work right.  The IDE controller for whatever reason only
sort-of worked if the drive was jumpered for "Cable Select" and had to
be explicitly set as Master or Slave.

Just one other thought... make sure your devalias for cdrom matches the
device found for probe-ide.
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[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Patrick Giagnocavo <patrick@...>
>Date: 2007/01/07 Sun AM 12:00:14 CST
>To: The Rescue List <rescue@...>
>Subject: Re: [rescue] AX1105 (Netra X1-alike) booting from cdrom problems...

<snip>

>After buying a spare DVDROM drive and putting it in my PC running
>Solaris 10, then running setup_install_server and add_install_client,
>then net booting the system, everything *appears* to be installing
>properly.
>
>And now, I can netboot-and-install any sun4u box I want, which is a
>nice bonus.

It's a great way to put an older machine to use (in my case an Ultra 10, but PC is good too), and with a low-cost 100+ Gig IDE HD you can store lots of OS versions and other software ;^)

Lionel
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[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Magnus <magnus@...>
>Date: 2007/01/07 Sun AM 08:26:04 CST
>To: The Rescue List <rescue@...>
>Subject: Re: [rescue] AX1105 (Netra X1-alike) booting from cdrom problems...

>Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
>> The problem I have is that I am not able to get known-good CDROMs or
>> DVDROM drives to be seen by the on-board IDE controller.
>
>I doubt this is your problem but I'll throw it out there.
>
>On my X1 I had a CDROM plugged in, it was recognized, but booting off of
>it would not work right.  The IDE controller for whatever reason only
>sort-of worked if the drive was jumpered for "Cable Select" and had to
>be explicitly set as Master or Slave.

Remember, Cable Select requires an appropriate cable, typically an 80 conductor cable - if you have the drve jumpered for Cable Select, and use a non-Cable Select cable, your results will be as the original poster described, now that I think about it.

I installed Win2K recently on a small desktop, and used a Cable Select cable and jumpered the drive as slave (actually, I had no jumpers, and that is what no jumpers meant). Anyway, the BIOS said no HD was on the bus, Win2K installed fine, but wouldn't boot :^(

When I actually jumpered the drive to Master and re-installed Win2K it installed fine.

If you want to make sure the drive/controller/etc are all functioning fine, I'd suggest getting a 40 pin IDE cable, jumpering the drive to Master and re-attempt the boot.

I also wonder if the OpenBot PROM settings were altered - have you reset them to defaults? (I'm not sure about decoding IDE dev paths)...

Lionel
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[Sheldon T. Hall]

Saith Lionel Peterson ...

> Remember, Cable Select requires an appropriate cable,
> typically an 80 conductor cable - if you have the drve
> jumpered for Cable Select, and use a non-Cable Select cable,
> your results will be as the original poster described, now
> that I think about it.

I've always wondered about "cable select."  I've never tried to use it,
having been warned off of it years ago, but I couldn't see how it would work
on a normal IDE cable....

Thanks.

-Shel
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[Chad McAuley]

On 1/8/07, Lionel Peterson <lionel4287@...> wrote:
> Remember, Cable Select requires an appropriate cable, typically an 80 conductor cable - if     > you have the drve jumpered for Cable Select, and use a non-Cable Select cable, your results > will be as the original poster described, now that I think about it.

Huh, you learn something new every day.  I'm primarily a PC guy[0],
and I never knew that Cable Select actually required compatible cables
to work.  After looking at the Wikipedia article and seeing how it
works it makes perfect sense, I guess I just never thought about
needing "special" cables for CS to work.


[0]: I know, those are probably fighting words around here.  :P  But
it's what I grew up with and thus am most familiar with.  Even though
I don't have much experience with non-x86 stuff (something I'd like to
fix), I still find the discussions here and on geeks quite
interesting.
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[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Chad McAuley <chizad@...>
>Date: 2007/01/08 Mon AM 10:17:44 CST
>To: The Rescue List <rescue@...>
>Subject: Re: [rescue] AX1105 (Netra X1-alike) booting from cdrom problems...

>On 1/8/07, Lionel Peterson <lionel4287@...> wrote:
>> Remember, Cable Select requires an appropriate cable, typically an 80 conductor cable - if     > you have the drve jumpered for Cable Select, and use a non-Cable Select cable, your results > will be as the original poster described, now that I think about it.
>
>Huh, you learn something new every day.  I'm primarily a PC guy[0],
>and I never knew that Cable Select actually required compatible cables
>to work.

It is called "Cable Select" after all ;^) <-- note I'm kidding...

I get tripped up every once in a while, usually when I figure something is so straight forward I don't need to think about it, and I grab the wrong IDE cable for the jumper settings on the drive...

Dell PCs were the first place I ran into Cable Select, years ago - I couldn't get my new second drive to be recognized by the Dell desktop PC, and finally I took a look at the settings on the original HD... For a commodity box like the Dell, it made sense once I thought about it (Dell wouldn't have to explain master/slave or primary/secondary driver terminology - they just said "set the drive to cable select and it will just work").

Lionel
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