[rescue] Sun CDROM rehash resurrected Q

[Brian Hechinger]

On Sat, May 04, 2002 at 01:08:41PM -0600, Leslie Connally wrote:
> I know this used to come up time and time again in sun forums, but is there
> a reasonably current Sun CDROM FAQ ?

beats me, but see below.

> I understand the issue of 512 v 2048 block size, but was this a SunOS issue
> only?  also a Solaris issue? or a sparc hardware a/o 'bios' issue (sorry..
> all I can think of is 'Open Firmware' .... what can I say.. I;m a mac guy)

this is a SunOS/Solaris issue that is *sorta* hardware related.  many many many
years ago when i got my first sparc at home, one of the two 500M disks it came
with died (followed shortly by the other, and dammit SCA disks were EXPENSIVE
back then) and so i needed to get an OS on it (of *COURSE* it's the disk with
the OS on it that dies, not the mostly blank home disk) and luckily my friend
had a copy of 2.5.1 for it.  (brand new at the time, woo!)

but all i had was a texel drive that had the ability to do 512, but lacked the
switch so i would have to take it apart and take a soldering iron to it.  so
i tried to find an alternate solution.  there was this set of instructions that
i found on how to install from a 2048 drive.  it bitches like hell, but it is
able to load the kernel in 2048 mode.  then you jump into the kernel debugger
and twiddle some bits and magically it would work.  never got it working, so i
had my friend who gave me 2.5.1 let me borrow his 1x SunCD drive. ;)

> I'm asking, cause my old cute SunCD hanging on my IPX running 4.1.3 died
> (actually the CD works.. its internal SCSI ID circuitry of the drive seems
> broken!)

that sucks!  any decent Plextor should have a jumper, and older SunCD drives
are cheap since they are only 1x-4x speeds (remember when a SunCD4 was THE
drive to have?)

> But the Sun CDROM FAQ I found on the web ended in 1996!

why do you need newer?  the IPX hasn't changed since 1996.  ;)

-brian
-- 
Whoops, nevermind...  the compile just imploded, crashing the xterm it was
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