[rescue] SunOS 4.1.1 - Can't set date

[Todd Vernon]

 This is what I needed to do on 4.1.4 on spare.  Might help.

https://oldsilicon.com/technologies/modern-time-of-day-sunos/

-t
Todd Vernon
Entrepreneur | Investor
Email: todd at toddvernon.com
LinkedIn: toddvernon <https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddvernon/>


On May 4, 2026 at 8:34:31 AM, Steve Hatle via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org>
wrote:

> All,
>
> With the help of fellow lister Walter Belgers, I’m getting my 3/80 back up
> and running,
>
> After getting a good framebuffer from Walter, and getting the NVRAM
> programmed (correctly, I hope…) I was able to find a ZuluSCSI image of a
> running 3/80 with SunOS 4.1.1_u1 from a post of VCFED. I downloaded that,
> and put it on a BlueSCSI, and the machine boots up as expected.
>
> The image is supposed to have the Y2K patches applied, and the system
> thinks its date is sometime in February of 2000. The clock keeps time - if
> I leave it unplugged for an hour, come back and start the system again, the
> clock will have advanced an hour.
>
> However, if I try and set the date, it won’t change. Using (doing this
> from memory, but following the man page)
>
>  YYMMDDHHMM
>
>  2605040924
>
> It would come back with
>
> Setting the date to 09:24 May 4 2026
>
> And then show the old date again.
>
> If I use a year prior to 2000 it does the same thing.
>
> Not sure if this is a SunOS quirk, an NVRAM hiccup of some kind, out an
> issue with the image and/or BlueSCSI.
>
> I should say writing stuff to the file system works OK, which makes me
> think it’s an NVRAM related thing, maybe.
>
> Does this ring any bells with anyone?
>
> My PROM level is 3.0, which seemingly precludes any chance of CD
> installation, though I have the CD. Tape is out of the question, unless
> someone has the tapes and the working drive they want to part with 🙂 I can
> try and put together a SCSI disk with the mini root and and install stuff,
> I guess, but that will be a project for the future.
>
> Thanks for any advice - I’m pretty excited the thing is working at all -
> this is an annoyance at this point, but if I want to do more with the
> machine, I’m going to want to figure it out, and do a more comprehensive
> install.
>
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://sunhelp.org/pipermail/rescue_sunhelp.org/attachments/20260504/f8b37cbc/attachment.html>