[OpenIndiana-discuss] Offtopic question to old SPARC users

[Lou Picciano]

Hello Jim, 

We've got a few of these old beasts around; the last of 'em still anxiously awaiting its, uhhh... 'Retirement Party'.

Seems to me we had to replace a battery on at least one of these at some point, but don't think it was the CR2032 'button' type, as I recall. Happy to send you some parts as needed(?), though distances probably an issue!(?) Happy, too, to disassemble one to find battery?

I do remember the project of flashing the EPROM when we got these things...  Jumpers to be set, etc,; great fun!

Lou Picciano

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Klimov" <jimklimov at cos.ru>
To: "Discussion list for OpenIndiana" <openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org>
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2013 5:45:19 PM
Subject: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Offtopic question to old SPARC users

Hello all,

   My attention was requested to an old UltraSPARC E450 machine with
Solaris 8, whose clock was going slower and worse for the past few
days, maybe weeks. Since about today it has practically stopped -
or more precisely, loops over the same 2-3 second interval over and
over, even with NTP client enabled.

   My hunch would be a dead battery on CMOS, or whatever the analog
of one would be. Any ideas where it might be located, and what model
it is (like CR2032 on Intel-compatibles)? Any more ideas?

   So far they are doing backups and the machine will go into a diag
reboot; normal reboot did not clear the errors at least.

   The beast is old, but serves as an appliance of an old database
which nobody knows how to manage or migrate nowadays, even if into
a Solaris8 branded zone on a newer SPARC, and the production payload
is needed and important. Nobody knows how it works, but they know
too well what for. Bummer...

Thanks for any hints, hunches, anecdotes...
//Jim Klimov

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