[SunRescue] IPC dead as doornail... possible causes?

[Tugrul Galatali]

On Sat, 14 Apr 2001, User Bobkeys BSD Bob the old greybeard BSD freak wrote:

> I picked up a 5 buck IPC at last weeks mooU surplus diving feeding frenzy,
> and it seems to be dead.  It is running a serial terinal and when powered

	The other day NYU threw out a lot of monitors + misc junk, and I
managed to pick up 2 IPCs from one of the bins. (I wish they would have let me
take monitors as there were a good deal of them, including huge suns...) One
of them was stripped, but in good cosmetic shape except for a damaged 13W3 
port, so I left it at school for the time being. The other one seemed to have
all the components (meaning ram + CG3), so I brought it home to see what I 
could make of it.
	Its boots up and all once plugged into my SS10s kb/mouse/monitor, but
I can't concieve of whether its worth salvaging... (I need to find a 
transciever for it to be any good at all) I assume I could make it a small NAT
box out of it if I never touch it again, but damn that thing is slow. The CG3
graphics make my SS10+CG6 feel like a godsend. I'm curious as to why people
still bother with them :) I assume I should try one fully decked out with 48MB
before complaining, as this little guy had 8MB. I would also look into the 
fact that its hostid is FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF (perhaps too many Fs in there).
I haven't read up on dead nvrams much ;)

	Another thing I'm wondering about with an Ultra 2 on its way to my
house is how is gcc's 64-bit code generation is. Does it make any difference for
most real world uses against Sun's compilers (ie, if I start building mozilla
and gnome on it) What is the deal with picking up a not the absolute latest
copy for cheap perhaps? Or should I just leech it off of NYU's ultra
enterprise shells if I can't get some contacts to duplicate them for me :)
	The damn package directory in /opt/SUNWspro is a gig.

	Tugrul Galatali (who will hopefully meet an E10K in person soon :) They
got one on the second floor of the building I spend most of my time in and I
didn't even know it. My nyu mail is being moved around by a E10k, what a 
waste =P)