[rescue] Sun3 SunOS 4.x help

[barryc]

I have a Sun3/80 that is giving me ulcers.

It has two disks in it - one 540MB drive mounted on /home, where all of my 
important data is kept, and one 330MB with partitions for /, /usr, and 
/usr/local.

The system drive has bit the big one.  It's developed three bad blocks that fsck 
& format/analyze cannot repair, and as a result won't complete the process of 
going into single-user mode, much less booting into multi-user mode.

When it does let me have a prompt, everything's left mounted read-only, and any 
attempt to access /usr/etc results in screens of the OS complaining about hard 
read errors.

"No big deal," I say.  I go into the storage area, and pull out an old 540MB 
drive, a tape drive, and one of our copies of the SunOS install tapes.

The 540MB drive passes format/analyze cleanly, so I try booting the install 
media....

I have two copies of SunOS 4.x install media, and four tape drives designed for 
this format of tape.  To summarize several hours of headache, no matter what 
combination of drive & tape I tried, I was unsuccessful in getting the machine 
to boot to the install media.

So, a system that I REALLY need to have up and running is sitting dead.

Would anyone out there who is still running some Sun3 hardware be willing to 
load SunOS 4.x (preferably 4.1.x) on a drive and ship it to me?  I can provide 
the hard disk.  I would, of course, be willing to compensate you for your time & 
costs.

Barry