[SPARCbook] Installation of Solaris 2.6

[John Appleby]

Hey,

I'm not sure if anyone is interested in this, but hey :). As maybe some
of you recall, I patched up Solaris 2.5.1 on my 3GX and it wouldn't boot
any more.

I managed to locate an external SCSI enclosure - just a regular PC one
with a 50-pin cable, and an old IBM 4x CDROM which had a "sector size"
jumper. When the jumper was set, it worked on my PC, and when I removed
it, it didn't, so I presumed that in was 2048byte and out was 512byte.

I still couldn't get it to work and checked the ID on the PC, which came
out as 2. I thus realized that although the external jumper on the case
said 6, the ID on the unit read 2 (I'd misread the jumper settings).

>From there the copy of Solaris 2.6 5/98 I bought from Douglas booted
just fine with "boot cdrom" (thanks Douglas!).

Moreover the machine can read CDROMs that I burnt on my PC, including a
copy of Solaris 7. This leads me to believe that the sector size is
purely relevant when reading data, and doesn't affect the 9660 format.
Really this shouldn't come as a surprise, but it's good to know... thus
silver copies of Solaris burnt on a PC should be able to be used as
installation media.

As relates to the actual installation, it was easier than I expected;
all the tadpole drivers were automatically installed.

Regards,

John