[geeks] SunOS 4.1.4 network install?

[Mouse]

> I'm having a lot of difficulty booting my Suns [...]

> My mac is stuck at all Fs...

"stuck at"?  As in, you can't change it even with the usual mkp/mkpl
dance?  Or as in, it returns to ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff on every power-off?

If the latter, you can set it to whatever you want (08:00:20:c0:ff:ee
is my usual choice in those circumstances) and netboot.

In case you're not familiar with "the usual mkp/mkpl dance", it looks
like this:

ok 0 f mkp
ok 8 0 20 c0 ff ee c0ffee mkpl

then type ^D^R and if you just get the ok prompt back, you should be
good (you can check with "banner").   If you get a copyright message in
response to ^D^R, try again with a small number other than f in the mkp
line.

The first six values on the second line are the MAC address; the last
value is the hostid.  (All in hex.)  They can be pretty much anything
you want, though the first octet of the MAC probably must be even (ie,
not be a multicast address).

If the former, I've never seen that and am not sure what to do beyond,
perhaps, checking that there is an NVRAM chip in the socket.  I have no
experience dealing with a completely absent NVRAM; it would not
surprise me if it were impossible to netboot in that case.

> Is there any means to install this system remotely? ;)

Well, you can always put the disk on another SPARC and set it up there.
I've done that often enough (though with NetBSD, not SunOS).

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