My SUN Ultra 60 no longer has video. The power button light is blinking as well. Checked jumpers, reseated CPU's and memory modules as well. Any suggestions out there? Thanks.
Hi,
( More for whoever follows, as it looks like you have a root cause and a plan. )
Let the system sit powered on for 10 minutes. If NVRAM has finally died it will do an extremely detailed, slow, agonizing POST - but eventually will wake up the video. During this process you should observe the keyboard LED's changing state occastionally. IF the system wakes up the video, you should see a NVRAM warning or it failing to identify a boot device. From the OK prompt you can usually specify the boot device and it can boot.
If the sustem has multiple video cards you may see the monitor wake up but not display video - this is because the BIOS is addressing the "wrong" card, this can be addressed by removing the additional card / attaching a monitor to both cards, etc.
Once you confirm its the NVRAM ( ID PROM ) is the issue - you can get a modern replacement from Digikey and avoid all the grinding. At retail these are about $30, on e-bay maybe $6.
The modern version just has more NVRAM ( which the Sun ignores ) and is rates for higher clock rate ( which doesn't matter ). Then you can go though the agony of reprogramming it. You can google the "MKP" method, I ended up doing it this way after many failed folk remedies you will find. My box is an Ultra 60 Creator edition, so this should work fine for your. Obviously... don't use my MAC address
The PROMID is on a orange sticker on the original, its located under the PSU which you have to remove.
I posted a thread on Twitter about it...
I know everyone is all about batter surgery, and that's fine, but as a modern replacement is available you can avoid that and if you really want, you can do the dremel on the old one and "for the next time" which will likely be 10 years from now. Note also that there are several compatible versions, varying by max clock speed and NVRAM size, you can download the data sheet and compare the pinout with the model above, or the sheet for the original one ( after carefully peeling the IDPROM label off it ).
-- Bob