RE: [cobalt-users] Raq3i & ROM Updates??

["jim st john" <jim@xxxxxxxx>]

>From: cobalt-users-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:cobalt-users->admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jerry Farquhar
>Sent: Sunday, December 22, 2002 9:43 PM
>To: Cobalt-Users
>Subject: [cobalt-users] Raq3i & ROM Updates??

>I have a older Raq3i that I've been trying to update the O/S to the
same as
>a Raq4r and it keeps hanging on me and reporting incorrect ROM version
or
>something similar.

>Anyone familiar with if there is a ROM upgrade available for these
Raq's??

>FYI - To my surprise when I popped the hood on the 3i I found that it
only
>had one IDE channel socketed on the board.  Not thinking that to be a
>problem I replaced the single drive ribbon cable with one for a dual
drive
>arrangement and connected up the two new 20GB drives I planned to use
in >the
>rebuilt system.  It seemed to recognize the drives fine (I had a
console up
>watching the boot process etc..).

>Am I missing anything else other than possibly a need for a upgraded
ROM?

>Any insight into this would be appreciated.

>Jerry

You can check your rom version using the 'cmos' command.  'cmos' by
itself will give you a help screen, I believe the command to display rom
version is 
"cmos -c romrev".

It should be 2.3.something, the latest I believe is 2.3.40.  If you go
to the sun-cobalt ftp site, the user area, then look under thockin for
good info re rom updates.

You don't need to physically change out the rom chip as it is flash
programmable using a utility called flashtool.  You can get flashtool
and the new rom image from the ftp site.

It's a pretty simple process, you just want to make sure you do it
exactly right, and I would strongly recommend having your box on a UPS
when you flash the rom.  Also be sure to make a backup copy of the
existing rom contents first, just in case.  If the flash process fails
and you try to reboot you are stuck with a dead box.

Even though you can install two drives on your machine on the single IDE
channel, I am pretty sure that you won't be able to do RAID, as I
believe that it requires drives on separate controller channels: 'had'
and 'hdc', you will have 'had' and 'hdb'.  You can probably get the
cobalt software to recognize the new drive as additional available
storage though you may need to manually mount the filesystem.

Are you sure that it's a 3i?  Does it have one or two Ethernet ports?

You may want to load the '4' or '4i' software rather than '4r'.

-jim-