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Old 28th Jun 2011, 7:04 pm   #12
Kat Manton
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Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: West Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 1,700
Default Re: Mostek/ST 'Timekeeper' IC (Sun NVRAM) repair

Quote:
Originally Posted by neon indicator View Post
Regular PC mobos it only Power fail during Flash Firmware update that bricks them.
Ah... that's actually a rather different problem to this. The OpenBoot firmware in the Suns is stored in EPROM (four 32-pin ones in the 1000E) so it's pretty much impossible to 'brick' them in the same sense as it is with a PC with BIOS in flash.

I think one of the things the NVRAM could be used for, though, is holding patches for the firmware.

NVRAM battery failure doesn't really 'brick' a Sun. You get dropped to the OpenBoot prompt and could then write a valid MAC address etc. into NVRAM, configure a few things then manually boot the OS; tedious to do but it'd be fine until you shut it down and kill the power.

Quote:
Originally Posted by neon indicator View Post
So what you going to use the Sparc for Kat?
Erm... I'm not sure... I think I'm using them primarily to play around with old Sun hardware...

Kat
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