So my UltraSPARC 60 kept wanting to boot from the net despite the boot-device being set properly. Turns out that the diag-switch? was set to true, presumably because an invalid checksum was detected & so the default values were loaded:

Incorrect configuration checksum;
Setting NVRAM parameters to default values.

Sure enough, my ethernet and host id were lost:

The IDPROM contents are invalid

(2 X UltraSPARC-II 450MHz), No Keyboard
OpenBoot 3.29, 1024 MB memory installed, Serial #0.
Ethernet address 0:0:0:0:0:0, Host ID: 00000000.

To fix the boot issue, I simply reset the diag-switch?:

{0} ok printenv diag-switch?
diag-switch? =        true

{0} ok setenv diag-switch? false
diag-switch? =        false

To fix the address and host id:

{0} ok 57 f mkp
{0} ok 8 0 20 b8 96 ef 80b896ef mkpl
Ctrl-D Ctrl-R
{0} ok
{0} ok .idprom

If you see a Copyright message after pressing Ctrl-D Ctrl-R, the sequence didn’t work and should be repeated. When successful, the .idprom command will show the address you just entered.

Of course, I didn’t have my original MAC address memorized, so I just based them off another UltraSPARC I had lying around. In the end, so long as it’s in the correct format and unique in your network, I don’t think it matters.

Finnally, I rebooted the system:

{0} ok reset-all

Note that in my case, it turned out that the NVRAM battery was dead, so powering off the system caused the problem to reoccur. But if you don’t power off the system, the above commands will get you up & running until you can replace the NVRAM. I haven’t ordered a new NVRAM yet, but my research shows it is Sun part #525-1430.