schur@venera.isi.edu (Sean Schur) (02/20/91)
I am having a really tough time. We just had several Sun 2/120's donated to Calarts by Lucasfilm. They had set up their system in quite a site specific configuration. We have entirely different needs for the Suns. Essentially, we would like to start from the beginning and configure the Suns from scratch. The 1/4" cartridge tapes we have are for SunOS 4.0, however, I cannot get the kernal to come up. I am trying to boot from Ram using MUnix, so I can format some hard disks. Alternately, I would like to boot from the swap partition on a hard disk that is already formatted, so I can run suninstall. I am able to copy the "miniroot" from the tapes to the hard drive swap partition with no problem. However, if I either try to boot from RAM for MUnix or boot from the swap partition for the miniroot, I get the same error. The software boots just fine through the inquiries about which devices and what filesystems are to be used for root and swap. As soon as it asks the last question the system crashes and reboots. The system crashes with a "panic: address error" message. There are a number of lines listing trap addresses and tracebacks, and I could provide anyone with these numbers if necessary, but I don't think it will help. I have tried swapping CPU cards, memory cards, video cards, everything (Lucasfilm gave us lots of spares). No matter what I do I get the same error. I think the problem lies with the kernel coming up. An associate of mine told me that he vaguely recalls a problem with running 4.0 OS on Sun 2's when it originally came out. He said he also vaguely recalls that it was a hardware problem and that there was a hardware fix for it. He doesn't remember what it was or where he heard it from, but he is pretty sure that is the problem. Which is why I am inquiring on the net. Does anyone out there remember about this problem and the fix for it? Please, I am desperate. I have worked on this problem for about a month now and am severely frustrated. Any assistance would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks. Sean Schur USENET: schur@isi.edu Assistant Director Amiga/Media Lab Compuserve: 70731,1102 Character Animation Department Plink: OSS259 California Institute of the Arts