Trying to load Solaris 2.3 on a external hard drive. The platform is a diskless SPARC Classic, the drive is supposed to be a Seagate Wren VII, but probe-scsi shows it as a IMPRIMIS 94601. The system tries to boot but complains: 

  Can't read disk label
  Can't open disk label package   
  Boot load failed
  Illegal instruction
Ah, the infamous WREN VII problem!! I, too had this problem when we upgraded our Sparc 1+s to Sparc 2s. The problem has persisted on into Sparc 10s.

Symptoms: The machine won't boot, and you get messages of 

	Can't read disk label
	Can't open Sun disk label package
Fix for the LX: Here is what you need to do for systems with version 2.6 or later of Open Boot PROMs (eg Sparcstation-10, Sparcstation-LX): 
ok nvedit						
  0: setenv use-nvramrc? false
  1: probe-all install-console banner
  2: cd /esp
  3: ' 0 ' 1 ' timed-spin >body 7 /token * + token@ (patch
  4: device-end
  5: setenv use-nvramrc? true
  6: C
ok nvstore
ok setenv use-nvramrc? true
Notes: 1) Don't change the spacing in line 3 above. It's important! 2) If there is more than one "esp" node in the system (i.e., if you have more than one SCSI Host Adapter), then you must substitute the full OBP pathname of the esp node that has the Wren VII on it for "/esp" in the example.

And here is the procedure for older versions of the Open Boot PROMs: 

	ok nvedit
	  0: setenv use-nvramrc? false
	  1: true to fcode-debug?
	  2: probe-all install-console banner
	  3: cd /sd
	  4: patch 0 1 sstart
	  5: device-end
	  6: setenv use-nvramrc? true
	  7: C
	ok nvstore
	ok setenv usr-nvramrc? true

I have a Sparc 2 with version 2.6 of PROM. The second method above somewhat resembles the "fix" provided a while back by Sun. Theirs didn't work, and neither did this one, on my machine.

The 1st method caused my machine to briefly display the line
"use-nvramrc = true" (or something very like)
AND THEN GO BLACK--NO RECOVERY POSSIBLE, AND NO BOOTING!
To go back to normal, power back on while holding down L1-N, setting the eeprom parameters back to default.

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