[rescue] Sparc Classic Resurrection for Newbie

[Ken Hansen]

On Saturday, January 5, 2002, at 09:53 AM, Don McClure wrote:

> on 1/5/02 9:17 AM, Joshua Johnston at flagg at midmaine.com wrote:
>
>> Hi there, folks.

Hi!

> Don't expect much help for newbies around here, the attitude is RTFM.

Well, there is sunhelp at sunhelp.org - this is the resthome for "elder" 
sun hackers, newbies might fare better there I guess/assume (never 
subscribed to it).

> Anyway, I have  been down this road. Don't spend much/any money on this 
> guy,
> at least on things that can't be used on better sparcs, what with the 
> price
> of Ultra 1's down under $200, and SS5, 10, 20's almost being given away.

Absolutely - fight the temptation to actually *pay* for anything for 
this system.

My advice would be to run the box headless (no keyboard/mouse/screen), 
and access it over your home net (you have one, right?)...

First, cobble together a serial cable, hook it up to a terminal or 
serial port and power it up.

Then, look for a suitable CD-ROM drive, one that support 512 *byte* 
sectors (typical PC drives support 2048 byte sectors) - Plextors, even 
old ones can be a very nice choice. If you get stick trying to find a 
drive, drop me a note off line and we'll see what we can work out (I've 
got some older drives that are idle at the moment)

Download an OS - Solaris is nice, but unless you find more RAM, it's not 
really an option. You could try OpenBSD|NetBSD|Linux - it is pretty 
trivial to download a .iso file and burn a bootable CD.

Enjoy - and keep your eyes open for a better box - an Ultra 1 is *quite* 
affordable, and I expect we will see a wave of low-priced SS/10s and 
SS/20s in the near future...

HTH,

Ken

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