Sun Blade 2000 with Expert3D

gumbald · 5 Aug 2009 at 10:16

Presuming this is the best place, I might catch a Sun wizard in here.

Power got pulled on a Sun Blade 2000 the other day and since booting back up I'm having display problems. It worked before connected to a 17" TFT running at 1280x1024, but with exactly the same setup I get nothing when booting up (well, "Input not supported").

Next I obviously tried an old CRT and got the following result:

This ruled out it just being a strange resolution I think. So, I plugged my terminal into the serial output and tried changing the resolution with SUNWifb_config, again with the TFT plugged in. At 1024x768x60 and a few other resolutions I managed to produce the blue and white fuzzy stripes on the TFT, but obviously nothing useful.

Is the graphics card goosed, or can someone give me a push in the right direction?

.walls · 5 Aug 2009 at 11:00

(disclaimer: Not a Sun wiz by any means!)

If the Sunblade is x86 - try booting a Live CD (OpenSolaris/Belenix/etc), if the box is SPARC, then you can boot from MilaX (as a live CD) or a Solaris/OpenSolaris install disk.

If it boots and you can see the display, it can be fixed. If it doesn't, it's goosed

EDIT: also - if the card is off-board, have you tried reseating it?

gumbald · 5 Aug 2009 at 11:36

.walls said:
(disclaimer: Not a Sun wiz by any means!)

If the Sunblade is x86 - try booting a Live CD (OpenSolaris/Belenix/etc), if the box is SPARC, then you can boot from MilaX (as a live CD) or a Solaris/OpenSolaris install disk.

If it boots and you can see the display, it can be fixed. If it doesn't, it's goosed

EDIT: also - if the card is off-board, have you tried reseating it?

Tried reseating it, tried a different slot and a new "reboot -- -r" but the same result. I'd not thought about using the install CD, I'll give that a bash in a bit hopefully and let you know the results.

Should I see anything as it's booting? This is what's puzzling me, I can't remember if it did before. Surely that would be at 640x480 or such and display on anything. However, I'm not getting anything until the input not supported error.

pingwing · 6 Aug 2009 at 00:42

Ill be the first to say the card looks goosed....

But, before that it sort of reminds me of the days when i used to use my old sun 17 inch crt at the incorrect refresh rate. It sort of decided its max resolution/refresh rate was 1100x921 (or variants of this depending on video card) at something like 58 or 63 mhz (could manage 75 as well). But yeah fettle about with a few other resolutions first...

Oh and im not a sun wizzard either

(though that would be such a cool title)

gumbald · 6 Aug 2009 at 09:27

I will get to try the boot CD soon, but was suspicious about the display not showing anything as it was booting up (normally). Can anyone confirm it should?

I've got control of two Sun boxes, the other one has an XVR-1000 (apparently) which I can't get to work (driver issues I think) other than on the 13W3 port. So that doesn't help me either! Might have to get a replacement Expert3D off the bay if no cheese later today.

dangerstat · 6 Aug 2009 at 21:31

Sorry in advance for this as it probably bears no relation to this.

When I had my old UltraSparc it need some kind of adapter to use a standard CRT with it, fortunately I got this supplied with my machine, but I've got a feeling it was all down to an odd refresh rate thing or vsync or something like that.

Cheers

D

.walls · 6 Aug 2009 at 21:44

gumbald said:
I will get to try the boot CD soon, but was suspicious about the display not showing anything as it was booting up (normally). Can anyone confirm it should?

Not got any Sun kit, but I've seen a few Sun boxes booting.... although I would expect a post... I can't remember if there is or not for definite though

gumbald · 7 Aug 2009 at 14:48

Hmm.

After noticing an error message about system/boot-archive, I've done a "boot -F failsafe" as suggested by others in relation to the error. The difference this has made is...:

The blue and white lines are now nice and crisp! But everything still doing the same. I can change resolution and the bars change sizes and are still nice and clear.

Regarding an adapter: it's been working fine like this for months!

Does this update make things clearer or more confused?

EDIT: The text vaguely visible on the screen is burnt in!

MikeTimbers · 9 Aug 2009 at 15:13

I've had the displeasure of having to install Windows on a Sun x86 rackmount and it works exactly as if it were a PC (which it is really). Can't speak for a SunBlade tho but I would have thought it would POST to the graphics output but also to the console output.

gumbald · 9 Aug 2009 at 18:09

I can see it doing the startup through the serial console, that's what's annoying. Might have to buy another card and test that theory. Confused that it is outputting perfectly 'fine' graphics though...