Sun MGA 9000 HD setup & software..

Anybody know what "fixed disk" number ( 1 - 47) to use in the BIOS setup for this machine? Both hard drives are Quantum ProDrive 40S, a 40 MB SCSI drive, 42 MB formatted.

Anybody have the software for this machine? Any state would do, I just need the gas analyzer and other diagnostic functions.

Thanks,

Reply to
Bob Courtemanche
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If it's a SCSI disk, the PC BIOS isn't going to handle it. That is only for AT interface or IDE drives. Is the SCSI controller onboard or on a separate card? If it's in a separate card, it will have its own setup program accessed at boot time or through debug. Then the SCSI BIOS takes over the disk services rendering any setting in the BIOS moot. If the SCSI controller is onboard, things could be very strange indeed.

Reply to
Ryan Underwood

I thought it was odd, also.

Both drives are SCSI drives. The drives are attached in the middle of a

50 pin SCSI cable which is attached to the CD ROM at one end (with terminator) and the Sun System Storage board at the other. The Sun board is labeled as having a SCSI BIOS on it.

This machine has a switch to boot either the PC (286 processor) or the smog analyzer. Either way I boot, I get the message:

"ROM Basic (int 18H) is not supported Disk Error, insert system disk and press any key to continue"

I tried making a system disk by copying all the DOS files from one of the hard drives onto a floppy. No luck. I also tried making a system disk on my PC (windows 95), no luck.

The drive containing what looks like the PC software has a SCSI ID 2, and the drive containing what looks like the State software is SCSI ID

  1. The CD ROM has SCSI ID 1. I'm able to access the software on both hard drives with my PC, which has a SCSI card. I can change the SCSI IDs on the hard drives to 0, 1, 2 or 4 with a jumper on the hard drive.

During startup, I don't see any reference to a SCSI BIOS like I do on my PC. The clock battery is dead (this unit sat unplugged for over a year), so I wonder if the BIOS somehow lost the SCSI part?

You mentioned debug, how do I access that?

Any clues?

Thanks,

Reply to
Bob Courtemanche

This would be normal behavior if the boot sector of the hard disk is unreadable for some reason. The IBM PC fell back into BASIC when it could not boot, but newer systems don't contain BASIC in ROM.

Does it attempt to boot from the floppy drive at all? What version of DOS is on the hard drive? (provide a directory listing if possible) Not only the boot/system files are required, but a boot sector which points to the kernel file (on MS-DOS, the kernel is IO.SYS; IBM DOS is IBMDOS.COM; etc). With MS-DOS that boot sector is constructed, and the system files copied, using the SYS utility. Things could be interesting if there is a very old or custom DOS on there.

Yeah, that is strange. I guess it is some kind of "silent" BIOS, or maybe it has become corrupted and fails a checksum. Do you have a prom reader with which you could dump the BIOS? What chips are on the SCSI controller?

And there is also the possibility that the SCSI card is storing its setup values in the system CMOS instead of in NVRAM on the card itself, if this card was specifically made for this system. That would be fun.

DOS boot disk, debug.com. You would have to find out where the SCSI BIOS is mapped in memory using something like MSD or Manifest (it would be listed as an "Expansion ROM". Then you instruct debug to jump to its initialization routine, which lives within the SCSI BIOS segment at a particular offset. For example, if the BIOS is mapped at C800h, you can do:

-g=c800:5

That would jump to segment c800, offset 5. The correct offset depends on the code of the specific BIOS, so you could try 1 through f and see which one if any will work. A wrong segment or offset will hang the machine. This is a long shot because I honestly have no idea how your SCSI card is meant to be configured. Many older SCSI and ST506 controller cards were configured in this manner, as opposed to having a character-mode GUI accessible when the BIOS invokes option ROMs like all newer SCSI and ATA cards do.

Reply to
Ryan Underwood

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