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On Sep 27, 2004, at 2:11 PM, Matt Dainty wrote:
> Newer NVRAM chips seem to have a subtle difference which the Sun's 
> don't
> like. I tried to replace the NVRAM in my IPX with a new one and found 
> it
> always produced an error on power-up, but would then boot when told to
> afterwards. I ended up getting a Lithium cell grafted onto the old chip
> and it works properly as before.
>
> I think the NVRAM FAQ recently started mentioning this fact too.
>

I went through this with an IPX a few months ago.  The latest runs of 
the NVRAM chips are in fact closer to true spec than the older ones.  
It seems that there is a specific register on the chip that cannot 
(according to the chip spec) have its high bit set to true.  
Unfortunately, older chips did not enforce this, and Sun chose to use 
that bit for a checksum when they wrote their firmware.

There was a 4-line .nvramrc that I ran across at some point that worked 
around this by forcing the probe and boot sequence, but I never got it 
to work on the IPX.  There is also rumor of a binary patch for some 
version of firmware that "fixes" Suns' firmware.

HTH,
~jk

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