[rescue] Sparc OS Install over serial

[Joshua Boyd]

On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 06:01:37AM -0800, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> --- "Mark T. Valites" <valites at geneseo.edu> wrote:
> > I'm looking for a way to bootstrap and install any modern OS
> > (preferably some flavor of linux) to a SS or Ultra class sparc,
> > but only use the serial port - no floppy, cd, network, or hard
> > disk to bootstrap from.
> 
> WOW - why on earth do you need to do this?
> 
> I don't think this is possible...

I think it is possible, if one is enough of a forth wizard.

It might mean pasting a page or two of forth code into the OK prompt to
write a program to disk that can suck down a kernel and everything else
from the serial port.

Actually, it really shouldn't be all that card.  You just need to write
a program to download a binhexed (or something similar) file system
image via serial port, then write that image to disk.  I would imagine
that this might not be too hard.

I think this would be easiest if you were to either have a dual disk
machine, or be installing NetBSD (or both).

But, I'm really no good with forth.