Need help with Axil 320 Sparc20 clone CPU/OBP upgrade

[LoadWB]

I know there are (or were) a few Sun hacks here, and I'm hoping someone has experience with this.

I have an Axil 320 with OBP 2.19.  It had two SM81 SuperSparc II 85MHz modules, and one of them started flaking out.  I have two Ross (Bridgepoint) 150MHz HyperSparcs I would like to use.  These are good CPUs as I pulled them working from a SparcStation 20.

Here are my dilemmas and what I've done so far:

1) System as-is will not recognize HyperSparc 150s and scrolls numerous errors through ttya on boot.

This is known as I require (I believe) OBP 2.19.3 or later to support HyperSparcs over 100MHz, if I read correctly.  I used an OBP v2.25 from an SS20, but it throws synchronous exceptions.  Therefore, I have obtained an OBP v2.25R (R=Ross modifications, though I don't know what) thinking this would address any issues with the Ross CPUs.

2) System with OBP 2.25R and HyperSparc 150 only recognizes CPU 0, and throws synchronous exceptions (00000009) and hangs.  STOP-A or terminal BREAK does nothing.

I went back to the SM81 85MHz SuperSparc II with OBP v2.25R and v2.25, and I get the same exception.


I have read posts from way the heck back in the past where people are posting Axil 320s with OBP v2.25 and HyperSparcs over 100MHz.  So it appears to be possible, but I'm missing something.

Does anyone know if the Axils require specially-modified OBPs to operate?  If so, where can I find one?  It seems the Axils were popular for a time and then just disappeared.  I can find odd bits here and there, but nothing which has helped me thus far.

How about this procedure: put the NVRAM in the SS20 and reset the NVRAM to default settings using the OBP v2.25R ROM in the SS20.  The thought here is that perhaps some setting from the OBP v2.19 is borking the v2.25R in the Axil.  Of course, whatever problems exist there may transfer over to the SS20; I'm just hoping the architecture is different enough to allow me to at least get to the Ok prompt and perform the NVRAM reset.

I greatly appreciate any input on this.

[LoadWB]

As much as I'd like to add something useful here....I can't. I'm staring at a Sun Ultra 10 at this moment and wondering what to do with it. It's a cool machine, but the amount of trouble it took to even get a prehistoric version of Mozilla running on it was quite amazing =).

Shoulda used a package from SunFreeWare  I remember one of the Solaris Companion CDs for Solaris 8 had Gnome and Firefox.  Don't know about Solaris 9, though.

Yeah, I have a couple of Enterprise machines in the garage.  Not bad specs, actually, for what I paid ($25 each): dual 400MHz UltraSparcs with 512MB RAM, two 9GB drives, and ATM fiber network cards.

In the end, I have resigned myself to sticking with the 85MHz SuperSparc IIs.  I ordered a replacement for about $50.  I wouldn't mind trying out 100MHz HyperSparcs if I could get my hands on some without having to risk losing money on it.  All-in-all, it looks like I've taken this Axil 320 as far as it's gonna go, and once it's dead it's dead.