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SunPC 4.2 hangs at Starting MS-DOS...

G

GregSS

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Mar 17, 2020
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I have a Sun Sparcstation 5 which has a SunPC accelerator card (5x86 Sbus Card) and is running Solaris 2.6.
I have installed SunPC 4.2 on it and the package add and install completed without any errors.
I next updated the path so that I could launch sunpc from the command prompt, and it starts to run...launches a new windows and starts to run but when it says Starting MS-DOS it just hangs there.

If anyone has any information that might help, I would greatly appreciate it. I am unsure if I am missing an update somewhere or just did not complete all the configuration steps, although the manual for 4.2 is pretty specific and it seems like none of the steps were skipped.

I would also try running SunPC 4.1, but it seems like my disc is no longer readable by the CD-ROM, so if anyone has an ISO of 4.1, I could remove 4.2, install 4.1 and then upgrade it to 4.2 if necessary.

Thank you,
GregSS
 
I unplugged the Accelerator card, and still had the same issue.
Next, I found an update to the 4.2 SunPC software, and ran it with patchadd, then rebooted the machine and it worked!
Then I plugged the Accelerator card back in, and now I can see the SoftPC Bios message, and never get to Starting MS-DOS...

It seems to see the Accelerator card (the word Accelerator appears at the bottom of the DOS window)

I am going to remove the card again and see if this system works again, before I declare a bad sbus card...which is harder to believe. It feels like I am missing some step in the install, but the 4.2 manual does not have any other steps.
 
I removed the card and the machine again will start the MS-DOS session.
I have another of those accelerator cards in a Sparcstation 5 (also not tested as it does not have a hdd at this time) so I took that accelerator card out and put it in this machine...and same result.
So I am fairly confident it is some version of software or update and not the hardware.
Not sure of the next test since I do not know which updates to try, and I cannot find an installable SunPC 4.1 set anywhere (I found the files on WinworldPC and burned them to CD, tried installing but the pkgadd fails each time).
Off to think...
 
Well, if anyone happens to look in on this thread, I did get it working.
I reinstalled Solaris 2.6, with the PC Card installed, and before touching anything else, I installed SunPC 4.2, and then an update to SunPC 4.2 and set my path setting to find the SunPC location. I then created a new user (my user) and logged in as that user and SunPC works. It will NOT work with Root user...but that is not really an issue for me.
 
I wish they had a thumbs up button. Thanks for sharing your problem and solution. I think it is important, the more information we put out there. The more it could help others. I have a bunch of Solve problems now on FreeBSD, even though they are most self fixed.
 
I tried all the above with my SunPC card but no luck. It looks like there is a hardware fault on the board. I tested the 586 on a PC motherboard and it was fine. Note without the board fitted SunPC works fine (under emulation) but with the board it crashes immediately. Its a pretty hard crash as it actually reboots the Sparcstation :/
 
Not to necro an old thread, but I had the same problem upon trying to install a 586 SunPC in an Ultra 1 running Solaris 2.6. I wasn't terribly interested in reinstalling Solaris 2.6 just to try and get this working, so I looked around and found patch 105557. After installing the patch and rebooting, I was able to boot DOS using the SBUS board.

mike
 
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