[rescue] Sun 3/110 Netbooting...

[Earl Baugh]

A bulk reply:

1) Yes the tape images for Sun OS 3.X I was able to download (I've had them
for a while, for both Sun 3 and Sun 2, along with some earlier Sun OS,
And I also have some Sun OS 2.X images.

2) Tape drive availability :  I do have some QIC drives (and "might" have
some tapes) however, I think by now I'd have to deal with the dreaded
"sticky rubber wheel"
and have to replace that.  It's an option, but the tape drive was down the
list a bit on the restoration list.

3) ndboot :  Well, if I do anything I'd use the FreeBSD image.  I "may" try
that next.

I was able to get some other stuff to work, for example, if I link tp.boot
to the boot.sun3.sunos3.5 link (which is linked to by the Hexadecimal
representation of the client ip) it downloads and I can get to the "Boot:"
prompt.   However, boot isn't smart enough to take "ie(0,0,0)" (with any
offset) as a param... it goes for a min then displays a "?" as an error
msg... (which I found humorous... but it was almost 3 am, so hard to tell
if I was just tired, or it really was funny :-) ).

So, what I'm downloading IS runnable (at least for some stuff).  It's just
I can't get to the next step in the booting process.
Everything else downloads FROM Boot: in the notes I've been able to dig up
(i.e. diag, copy, etc).

I've read that the FreeBSD can serve a Sun 3, but I don't seem to see nd or
ndboot or whatever on the VM image I have.

4) netboot NetBSD and write miniroot

That's something that I have thought about.  The question ends up being
where do I put all the rest of the SW to install...
I guess it would be in a different partition on the same disk?   This of
course starts to cross over onto the other thread,
I'd have to have a working disk (or substitute).   Not quite there yet...

At least an avenue to explore (though it's frustrating to feel this close,
esp. with the Boot: prompt.... that's the first "it's really working"
feedback I've gotten on the Sun 3... and it felt really good to finally get
to that point after all these years of working on this box...)



Earl