New Indigo battery but still no console

[pentium]

I picked up another Indigo and this one had a dead battery. I could also not get anything out of the serial port using a regular mac serial cable and a powerbook running Zterm (9600, 8, n, 1). I replaced the battery with a CR2032 and I'm still getting the symptoms seen prior to the swap: System chines, flashed the front light orange and displays a random character on the terminal (which is normal when you switch the Indigo on).
I should at the least be getting a complaint about the TOD being wrong, right?

[miod]

I should at the least be getting a complaint about the TOD being wrong, right?

Without the new battery, yes. With the new battery soldered, it should not complain that the time is way off, as long as the oscillator is running. Of course there's the possibility of the serial console settings being different than the canonical 9600-8n1, if the previous owner changed it. You might want to tinker with different values; I remember one of my Indy was set up, for some reason, to 2400 bps (``dbaud'' variable).

[recondas]

...using a regular mac serial cable...

Null modem?

[SAQ]

...using a regular mac serial cable...

Null modem?

"regular" Mac serial cables with MiniDIN-8s on each end are all nulled, Mac cables with a DB-25 and more than 4 pins are often not nulled, and Apple's conceptions of flow control are not always SGI's conceptions of flow control - so be careful if you're using one of these cables with an adaptor.

Best is probably to check the cable using a VOM and the pinouts from the Indigo Owner's Guide.

[pentium]

If it helps I also tried with a MiniDIN 8 to DB9 adapter followed by a null modem cable as well but because I can't find my gender adapters I can't go from the adapter straight to the serial port on my VT-100.
I could of sowrn though that in the past I was getting a working console with a mac serial cable running to a MessagePad 130 running NewTerm.

[miod]

"regular" Mac serial cables with MiniDIN-8s on each end are all nulled, Mac cables with a DB-25 and more than 4 pins are often not nulled, and Apple's conceptions of flow control are not always SGI's conceptions of flow control - so be careful if you're using one of these cables with an adaptor.

For what it's worth, and not exactly related to the topic, I am using Sun DE25<->mini-din serial cables (for use with Sun SPARCstation IPC/IPX systems) to talk to Indigo/Indy/Indigo2 serial ports, and have never had any problems with them.

[pentium]

BuMP.
Ended up getting a new pile of spare CR2032's and the system went right up to a console prompt with a new battery so that last one must of been bad.

[fu]

nice style pent, a duo boots the indigo :)

[josehill]

"regular" Mac serial cables with MiniDIN-8s on each end are all nulled

Not always true - I have some in my box-o-cables that are not nulled. I think some were used with certain Mac-specific modems, and others were extension cables. (No, they're not AppleTalk cables, either )

That said, I imagine that old ImageWriter II printer cables are, by far, the most common 2x MiniDIN-8 Mac serial cables, and they are indeed nulled.

[josehill]

Indeed. Duos make great serial terminals!

nice style pent, a duo boots the indigo