Ryan Kirkpatrick wrote:
I have a Sparc 20 running Debian/Potato quite happily with dual SM71 processors (stays up for weeks on end). The only problem with the system is that I am unable to get the serial ports to work, either from the PROM console or from Linux. I am aware of the A/B nature of the serial port on this machine, and have attempted with known good null modem serial cables (i.e. they work on Sparc 5s and everything else). I have also verified the motherboard jumper settings to make sure that the serial ports are configured for RS232 (and NOT RS422). If I boot the system w/o keyboard or framebuffer (there is no VSIMM in this machine), no output ever appears on the serial port, but the system will boot just fine. Once Linux is booted, w/ or w/o the keyboard+framebuffer, I can not get any gettys to work on the serial ports either. It is as if the entire serial port is disabled, or worse just a black hole for data. :( So, given that I have checked every bit of hardware and software I can think of, does any one have any other ideas? I simply want to use the serial port for the console, removing the need for a keyboard and framebuffer. Is there some other jumper that I need to set, or some PROM variable that could disable the serial port like this? I got this system used and have no clue as to its prior history, especially with regards to it serial ports. Though I did upgrade the firmware on this system (to suppor the dual SM71s), but the serial port never worked before that either. Lastly, if I can't get the onboard serial port working, is it possible to add an sbus card with additional serial port to the system and use one of them as a console? Thanks.
Could the serial port be running at some settings other than the defaults (9600,8,n,1,-)? What does ttya-mode and ttya-rts-dtr-off say if you printenv at the ok prompt (assuming of course you have a keyboard and monitor to hook up to the system so that you can get to the ok prompt) or run eeprom from within linux?
