We have a Sunfire 280R (old SPARC/Solaris server) that is refusing to come up after being relocated. We're trying to connect to the serial console port, but all we get is random gibberish on the screen. We've tried both connecting with a DB25>DB9 adapter and using a DB-25->RJ45 adapter with a cisco RJ45->DB9 adapter to a windows laptop.

We're configuring the laptop to 9600 baud, 8 bit, 1 stop bit, no parity. We've tried both no flow control and Xon/Xoff.

We get the same results hooking up to the serial port on a working SPARC server, so it's probably something in our setup rather than a fault with the server.

How do we get access to to serial console so we can work out what is stopping this box from getting to the network? Is there a special sun adapter we need to get/make to get the serial link working?