Memory slot ids for SPARCstation 5?

2007-12-25 10:50:00

Dear fellow Sun Managers,

First of all, I would like to give my thanks to the following Sun

Managers who took the time to reply my post (attached below)

Barry Gamblin <bgamblin@hao.ucar.edu>

Kulp, Scott <skulp@lucent.com>

John McIntire <john_mcintire@unitrode.com>

Ray Buckley <ray.buckley@enetgroup.co.uk>

Barry pointed me to a very helpful Sun infodoc which I will quote again

in its completeness. It is exactly what I was looking for:

=============================================================================

http://sunsolve.sun.com/private-cgi/us/doc2html?infodoc/15510+90718278126680

INFODOC ID: 15510

SYNOPSIS: mfsr mfar numbers & troubleshooting

DETAIL DESCRIPTION:

EXAMPLE:(COULD BE ANY SPARC SYSTEM)

ss5 with 4 32MB simms installed.

and you get the following type of error message...

Aug 9 01:22:10 wsplcp7 unix: panic: asynchronous memory fault:

MFSR=80802820 MFAR=6190710

The useful bit here is the Memory Fault Address Register, MFAR. This

register contains the physical address of the faulting location. Open

your FE Handbook, Volume I to CONFIGURATIONS, CPU, and then the SS5 page

and refer to the SIMM sockets for the SPARCstation 5 CPU board. Compare

the address in the MFAR, 0x06190710, to the address ranges depicted there

and you'll see that it falls in the range of 0x06000000 to 0x07ffffff which

corresponds to J0303.

example of SS5 memory slot layout:

J0403 SIMM7 RAS 7 0e000000 - 0ffffff

J0402 SIMM6 RAS 6 0c000000 - 0dfffff

J0401 SIMM5 RAS 5 0a000000 - 0bfffff

J0400 SIMM4 RAS 4 08000000 - 09fffff

J0303 SIMM3 RAS 3 06000000 - 07fffff ** 0x06190710 falls here

J0302 SIMM2 RAS 2 04000000 - 05fffff

J0301 SIMM1 RAS 1 02000000 - 03fffff

J0300 SIMM0 RAS 0 0e000000 - 01fffff

SOLUTION SUMMARY:

PRODUCT AREA: System Administration

PRODUCT: Device config

SUNOS RELEASE: n/a

HARDWARE: Sun 4m

==============================================================================

Ray took the trouble sending me a PDF documentation which further

enhanced my understanding of the issue with its clear illustrations.

John suggested me a utility memconf. I will get and install it later

on. Finally, Scott Kulp suggested me to search http://docs.sun.com/

Well, I did. But it's not that helpful, especially I knew it didn't

have the Field Engineer's Handbook.

Again, I would like to thank the above four Sun Managers.

Regards,

Chin Fang

fangchin@leland.stanford.edu

------------------------------ original post ---------------------------

Dear fellow Sun Managers,

This morning, when I walked into my office, I noticed that one of our

Sun SS5 170 Mhz was showing an ok prompt. Looking at the display,

I realized immediately a memory module went bad - it's the infamous

asynchronious memory fault - BAD TRAP type variety. No biggie, tuned

off the machine, opened the case, and the other spare machine's case,

swapped memory, tuned it back on. No problems.

I then took my time to try to figure out which memory module went bad

on the spare machine. Did the following

ok> setenv diag-switch? true,

ok> test /memory

It then showed something like Misaligned memory, watchdog reset, and

the memory slot etc.

By swaping memory in and out in sequence, I finally nailed two modules

that needed replacement. After taking them out, the test /memory had

a clean run. This took me a while and was quite a drag.

When I was doing it, I really wished I had remembered how to identify

memory slots on SS5 system board or had a handy reference (like the FE

Handbook) on such matters so that I didn't need to waste time swapping

memory modules.

Checking Sun's web site, it requires a lame My Sun registration and a

wait for two days to access some parts of the FE Handbook. I went to

the Microelectronics section, looking for something like the very nice

PDF OEM Manual for AXi system boards (which identifies all memory

slots using J0001 J0401... J0404 etc.), but couldn't find anything for

SS5 system board.

If anyone knows of where I can find such memory slot id info for

SS5, I would be very appreciative for a pointer. Once I have the

slot id info, I will probably do a preventive audit of all our

SS5s (we still have quite a few) and do an advance memory module

replacement should anything else fails to pass the test /memory

test.

Regards,

Chin Fang

fangchin@leland.stanford.edu

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