[rescue] Sparc 1

[Steve Pacenka]

On Wed, 2002-02-20 at 02:44, Kenneth Dunn wrote:
> I'm about to look at getting my very first Sun :-)
> 
> It is a Sparc 1. What should I look for before handing over the cash
> for it ($NZ50 - ~US20)
> 
> It comes with a monitor, 1GB HDD, keyboard and possibly a mouse. I don't 
> know what I'm look at (if it where an Alpha I'd have 1/2 a clue)

Does the machine actually boot to an OS installed on the hard drive? 
Good price for something that complete.

Besides the pizza box (including motherboard and power supply), hard
drive, monitor, and keyboard, a bootable system using its own keyboard
and monitor requires the following:

- good NVRAM.  When the NVRAM battery runs out the machine forgets its
machine type ID and ethernet hardware address, among other things.

- memory. 30-pin SIMMs, in groups of four.

- keyboard cable if not hard-wired to the keyboard

- if optical mouse type, need an optical mousepad (metal, with grid)

- to use ethernet on motherboard requires a medium access unit; AUI
15-pin jack on the box

- SBUS framebuffer card

- monitor cable


To install a fresh OS requires booting from a floppy, booting from an
external SCSI CD drive, or netbooting from another machine have
appropriate daemons and downloadable kernel et al.  I've had somewhat
poor luck with floppy booting (perhaps due to poor media), but CD
booting has worked very well.

-- enjoy, SP