Help! Trying to install Solaris 10 on a Sunblade 100

I recently bought a sunblade 100 for $150 from a guy that posted it on craigslist. I'm trying to learn Solaris 10. Prior to giving me the system he had Ubuntu installed. He removed it for before giving it to me. I basically have a hard disk that has nothing installed in it. I tried installing Solaris 10 using the 5 CDs. It goes through the initial process where it asks for a language, region, hostname and password. It then goes to the "Ininitializing.." window, which has a status bar. When the status bar reaches 52%, I get a pop-up error message saying,

"No disks found. Check to make sure disks are cabled and powered up. Press ok to exit."

I opened the case, and made sure that cable for the hard drive is installed properly. It was. I even went as far as replacing the IDE cable. I also tried downloading a DVD iso of solaris 10, thinking it may be something wrong with the CDs. I also replaced the CD-Rom drive with a DVD-ROM drive. After doing all this, I still get the same result.

I thought I might have to re-format the hard-drive. I did some research on how to do this. On the # prompt, I tried using the 'format' command. It asks me to select from the list of partitions. I only have one which is

0. c0t0d0 <drive type unkown
   /pci@1f,0/ide@d/dad@0,0

When I select 0 I get a message saying "Segmentation Fault - core dumped"

I did further research thinking it might be a hardware problem or firmware problem. I tried running the open boot diagnostics using the obdiag command on the ok> prompt. I'm supposed to get the obdiag> prompt. Instead I am getting an error message,

ERROR: /packages/obdiag-menu: Last Trap: Memory Address not Aligned

It then brings me back to the ok> prompt.

I have 1GB of memory. 2x512. I tried swapping memory cards, or just using one, and I still get the same result.

I want to return this product to the guy that sold it to me. I already told him about the issues I have been having. But I'm not sure if there is really something wrong with the hardware or firmware itself.

I'm also thinking that the hard drive might just need to be formatted or partitioned. But I have no way of doing this with the issues I get with the system. If there is any other way, please let me know.

Abe

It sound like you might need to learn more about how to make a filesystem and mount it:

The fact that format is giving your "drive type unknown" means you need to label the disk, you need to know what size, how many cylinders, etc. the disk is/has and then select the label from format and set the disk parameters accordingly, see: BigAdmin Submitted Article: The 'format' Utility in the Solaris Operating System.

If you get no success with that then you can test the disk down at the open boot prom (OBP, see: http://www2.ifh.ee.ethz.ch/~ballisti/computer_topics/docs/U10svc/HTML/files/c0406.htm), by hitting the <Stop>+<A> keys together and then running a probe-ide-all (or probe-scsi-all for scsi attached disks, not normally applicable to a Sun Blade 100) ) which will list all the devices the OBP can see on the buses, if no hard disk is listed here then Solaris certainly will not see it, note that your cdrom drive should also be listed.

Although this won't help your issue, but I found it helpful when I bought my Sun Blade 100 for the same reason you did.
The Unoffical Sun Blade 100 FAQ: Unofficial Sun Blade 100 FAQ

Neo, Thanks for your reply. I guess the main issue I have with what you posted is that I can't get to format the disk. Every time I try to format the hard drive, I get a segmentation fault - core dumped error.

TonyFullerMalv, I did the probe-ide-all and it recognizes the hard drive.

I think it is an Openboot firmware problem with the memory, because obdiag itself does not work. I keep getting ERROR: /packages/obdiag-menu: Last Trap: Memory Address not Aligned.
I want to try to flash the firmware even though it already has the latest version. But, I can't figure out how to do this without having Solaris already installed on the disk. Does anyone know if there is a way to do this from a CD, or maybe from another computer using a serial cable? I'm getting frustrated, but I don't want to give up.

Abe

give sysdiag cd a try, it's an excellent tool. boot to cd & try formatting via gparted. I don't know if ufs is an option, but it's worth a shot.

your hard drive is dead