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So I have burned *way* too many hours on and off over the last couple weeks trying to get an Ultra 25 Sparc box I inherited working.  This box came to me with the video card not in the machine and some comment about it not working.

After putting the video card back in the box, when I booted the box it would not give any video output to the monitor.  I hooked into the serial console (9600-8-N-1 of course) and it appeared to be hanging with the last output being: Probing I/O buses

reset reason: 0000.0000.0000.0004
@(#)OBP 4.25.9 2007/08/23 14:17 Sun Ultra 25 Workstation
Clearing TLBs
Power-On Reset
Membase: 0000.0000.0000.0000
MemSize: 0000.0000.0004.0000
Init CPU arrays Done
Init E$ tags Done
Setup TLB (small-footprint mode) Done
MMUs ON
Init Fire JBUS Control Register… 
Find dropin, Copying Done, Size 0000.0000.0000.7260
PC = 0000.07ff.f000.6178
PC = 0000.0000.0000.6228
Find dropin, Copying Done, Size 0000.0000.0001.1440
Diagnostic console initialized
Configuring system memory & CPU(s)

CPU 0 Memory Configuration: Valid
CPU 0 Bank 0 1024 MB Bank 1 <empty> Bank 2 1024 MB Bank 3 <empty>

reset reason: 0000.0000.0000.0005
@(#)OBP 4.25.9 2007/08/23 14:17 Sun Ultra 25 Workstation
Clearing TLBs
Loading Configuration

Membase: 0000.0002.0000.0000
MemSize: 0000.0000.4000.0000
Init CPU arrays Done
Init E$ tags Done
Setup TLB Done
MMUs ON
Init Fire JBUS Control Register… 
Block Scrubbing Done
Find dropin, Copying Done, Size 0000.0000.0000.7260
PC = 0000.07ff.f000.6178
PC = 0000.0000.0000.6228
Find dropin, (copied), Decompressing Done, Size 0000.0000.0006.4530
Diagnostic console initialized
System Reset: CPU Reset (SPOR)
Probing system devices
jbus at 0,0 SUNW,UltraSPARC-IIIi (1336 MHz @ 8:1, 1 MB) memory-controller
jbus at 1,0 Nothing there
jbus at 1c,0 Nothing there
jbus at 1d,0 Nothing there
jbus at 1e,0 pci
jbus at 1f,0 pci
Loading Support Packages: kbd-translator obp-tftp SUNW,i2c-ram-device SUNW,fru-device SUNW,asr
Loading onboard drivers: ebus i2c i2c i2c ppm
/ebus@1f,464000: flashprom rtc serial serial env-monitor i2c power
/ebus@1f,464000/i2c@3,80: gpio temperature temperature temperature front-io-fru-prom sas-backplane-fru-prom dimm-spd psu-fru-prom hardware-monitor
/i2c@1f,520000: dimm-spd dimm-spd dimm-spd dimm-spd
/i2c@1f,530000: motherboard-fru-prom gpio clock-generator
/i2c@1f,462020: nvram idprom
Probing memory
CPU 0 Bank 0 base          0 size 1024 MB
CPU 0 Bank 2 base  200000000 size 1024 MB
Probing I/O buses

Based on the fact that it stopped working at “Probing I/O buses” and there was the possibility of an issue with the video card, I tried removing the card and booting headless.  In this configuration the system came up fine, with access from the serial port.

I eventually discovered that the issue was an impacted pin in the external dongle that splits the high density dual-dvi port in to two separate DVI ports.  The important note here for anybody searching for this issue is that when you have a video card in the machine, the last thing you will see on the serial console is Probing I/O buses since once it finds the video card, all future output is redirected to the video console.  So if you don’t get any output on the screen make sure to double check your video dongle, cables, and monitor!

Also, another unexpected behavior I ran into while troubleshooting- If I left the USB keyboard hooked to the machine while booting, it will assign that as the input device, and it won’t accept input on the serial console, even though that is where all output is going!  It is very odd typing on a keyboard and having your output go to a serial console…

-Eric