firmware password on 3B2/400 (L o n g)

[Dennis S. Breckenridge]

blackman at hodgkin.med.upenn.edu (David Blackman) writes:

>machine.  Is there any way to discover or set the firmware password
>without a floppy key?

 I have heard this story too many times. Pay the System Administrator
more money! :-) 

 To break into the 3B2 open the covers and look in the lower right
corner for a battery. Follow the wires back to the main circuit board
and disconnect the plug (for about 5 or so minutes). This will cause
a NVRAM powerfailure forcing the password to revert to "mcp" as well
as reseting the clock and a couple of other things. The system, when
powered back up will report a NVRAM Sanity Failure. This is a good 
sign. When the machine finishes the diagnostics (DIAGNOSTICS PASSED)
reach around the back just to the right and up from the power cord
and press the reset button. Some 3B2's actually had a button but the
newer ones just have a hole to stick a paper clip or small screwdriver
into. The system will report:

SYSTEM FAILURE: consult your system administation guide.

You can consult the guide but it will prove to be useless, there is
no information on how to get out of this mess. 
 Insert a write enabled Disk ONE of N (Unix boot disk) into the 
floppy drive and type "mcp" on the console. If all is well the 
system will prompt you for a device to boot from. Tell it the 
floppy disk. It will then prompt for name of program to boot. Type
"/unix". After what seems to be several weeks you will be greated
by a menu. At the menu's prompt type "magic mode" and the system
will respond with "POOF!" This is a good sign. Now look at the 
choices for the menu picks and you will discover that you now have
a "shell" choice. Respond with "shell" and low and behold a super user
shell will appear. You have successfully booted a single user version
of unix from the floppy. There are a limited selection of commands
here so things like "ls -l" won't buy you much. Follow the steps 
exactly as listed:

# fsck -y /dev/rdsk/c1d0s0
                                  - fsck responds with all the blah blah 
# mkdir /mnt
# mount /dev/dsk/c1d0s0 /mnt
# cat /mnt/etc/passwd > /mnt/etc/opasswd
# cat > /mnt/etc/passwd           - you will not get a prompt now!
root::0:1::/:
^d                                - thats a control-d
#                                 - if you messed up repeat the cat command
# cat /mnt/etc/opasswd >> /mnt/etc/passwd
# cat /mnt/etc/passwd             - just to make sure there are 2 root accounts
# cd /
# umount /mnt
# sync
# sync
# sync
# uadmin 2 0

Reboot the machine and you now have NO root password to deal with. Once
the system comes up log in and vi the /etc/passwd file. Delete the first
(no passwd) root entry and then save it. Then set a root passwd on the
machine. 

>Also:  I benchmarked the machine using version 2 of the dhrystone
>benchmarks and a c compiler called fpcc.  I got terrible results - 
>roughly 700 dhrystones/sec (yes i even measured the time with a 
>stopwatch).  Is this normal?

3B2 400's are not the fastest machine on the planet, in fact on a 
single user test a 386 could blow it away. Where the 3B2 starts to
shine is found on a heavy disk intensive application. 386's roll over
and die (single ported disks, STUPID "AT" DOS BUS, single ported memory)
when more than 4 users go for disk at the same time. The compiler you
want to be running is CPLU 4.2. There was a compiler from Greensboro
that took advantage of the MAU. Do you have a Math Accelerator Unit?
I do not know of the fpcc compiler but the 400 is rated as a 0.9 MIPS
machine. 


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NAME:     Dennis S. Breckenridge   UUCP: uunet!tmsoft!nebulus!dennis
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