[SunRescue] 'Getting started' questions

[Scott Newell]

Hi.

Made a trip to the local dead freight warehouse yesterday and spotted a
pallet of old Sparc pizza boxes (all Sparcstation 2s, I think) and
shoeboxes (either IPC or IPX?  The one I opened had 72 pin simms).

My introduction to the internet was through old machines like these, so I
bought a Sparcstation 2 out of curiosity.  After soldering up a serial port
cable and reading through the boot monitor section of the hardware faq, I
was able to bring it up and gather some info:  40 meg ram, 2 Fujitsu 528
meg drives, GX/CG6 framebuffer, rom v2.4.1, SunOS 4.1.4.  I've got no
keyboard, mouse, monitor, or cabling.

So, what now?  I'd like to have a spare machine to transfer files between
work and the house;  something I could plug into the network, ftp, and unplug.

What would it take to adapt the AUI ethernet port over to something more
common, like RJ-45 or BNC?  I've never used AUI.

What's the OS of choice for this vintage?  Linux, FreeBSD?  I know nothing
about SunOS--I still haven't figured out how to add a user (!) or even how
to start up getty so I don't have to do the 'send a break to ttya, boot
disk -s' routine every time I power up.  Viewlogic didn't leave anything
other than the OS on the drives.

What's the going price on junk like this?  I could probably pick up a few
more for ~$10 each, but I'm not sure if I want to go to the trouble of
sticking 'em on eBay.  (Besides, I'm not sure they're all complete.  I did
see a couple with no drives or memory.)


thanks,
newell