Re: Sun hardware in need of a good home

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

On 24/10/16 14:30, Bob Ham wrote:

Hi all,

Let me tell you a little story.  Many moons ago, while I was living away
from Bristol, a man appeared at a meeting of the Bristol and Bath Linux
User Group offering abundant gifts to all and sundry.  Inside the boot
of his car lay a treasure trove of Sun computers, as I understand,
originating from the University of Bath.  A number of these were taken
by a LUG regular, a hacker of great skill named John Honniball, who took


Jon Honeyball was pleasantly notorious for writing magazine columns from 
the POV of somebody who owned the sort of equipment with a spec that 
mere mortals wouldn't dream of for 18 months or so. The result of this 
was that the "British Standard Honeyball" unit was a bit of a movable 
feast when it came to equating it to actual amounts of RAM, clock speed 
and so on :-)



them in order to offer the gems to any who sought to learn the ways of
the SPARC and the arcane magic of Engineering Workstations The Right
Way.  When I returned to Bristol I was honoured to be offered, and
accept, a SPARCclassic from John.

Some years later, after I had left Bristol and returned again, another
LUG regular, a Unix wizard from the University of Bristol's department
of physics named Winnie Lacesso, notified us that there were a number of
Sun workstations being disposed of by her department.  (The same
department providing part of the computing grid for the LHC no less.)  I
took the opportunity to visit the department and acquire a SPARCstation
4, along with two Sun monitors, from the learned folks.

Now, I live in Liverpool.  I have tinkered and explored and learned.  I
have gained a great deal from these gifts.  However, I have moved on and
I feel it is right that instead of gathering dust, these gems should
again be offered to any who seek.  So, in need of a good home are:


[Etc.] I sympathise, but unfortunately some of the things that I'll have 
to get rid of at some point are orders of magnitude bigger and heavier 
than what you've got.


--
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]

Sun hardware in need of a good home

[Bob Ham]

Hi all,

Let me tell you a little story.  Many moons ago, while I was living away
from Bristol, a man appeared at a meeting of the Bristol and Bath Linux
User Group offering abundant gifts to all and sundry.  Inside the boot
of his car lay a treasure trove of Sun computers, as I understand,
originating from the University of Bath.  A number of these were taken
by a LUG regular, a hacker of great skill named John Honniball, who took
them in order to offer the gems to any who sought to learn the ways of
the SPARC and the arcane magic of Engineering Workstations The Right
Way.  When I returned to Bristol I was honoured to be offered, and
accept, a SPARCclassic from John.

Some years later, after I had left Bristol and returned again, another
LUG regular, a Unix wizard from the University of Bristol's department
of physics named Winnie Lacesso, notified us that there were a number of
Sun workstations being disposed of by her department.  (The same
department providing part of the computing grid for the LHC no less.)  I
took the opportunity to visit the department and acquire a SPARCstation
4, along with two Sun monitors, from the learned folks.

Now, I live in Liverpool.  I have tinkered and explored and learned.  I
have gained a great deal from these gifts.  However, I have moved on and
I feel it is right that instead of gathering dust, these gems should
again be offered to any who seek.  So, in need of a good home are:



* Sun SPARCclassic workstation, 64MB memory, 9GB SCSI disk

http://www.obsolyte.com/sun_lx/
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/6751/Sun-SPARCclassic/

The battery in the NVRAM has gone.  If you're not familiar with NVRAM
issues, see:

http://www.lib.ru/TXT/faqsunnvram.txt

and for an adventure to whose excitement I can personally attest:

https://gigawa.lt/gigawa.lt/Sun_NVRAM.html



* Sun SPARCstation 4 workstation, 64MB memory, 9GB SCSI disk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation_4
http://www.obsolyte.com/sun_ss5/



* Sun GDM-17E20 monitor

http://www.shrubbery.net/~heas/sun-feh-2_1/Devices/Monitor/MONITOR_Color_17_Premium_CRT.html#365-1338



* Sun GDM-17E10 monitor

http://www.shrubbery.net/~heas/sun-feh-2_1/Devices/Monitor/MONITOR_Color_17_Premium_CRT.html#365-1316

From what I recall (and the scribblings on the top of it), this monitor
is unstable sometimes.  Having just plugged it in, it displays the
console fine but I haven't tried X with higher resolutions, or for an
extended period.



* I also have a type 6 keyboard and mouse.  This was bought for £20 on
eBay so that I could press two keys, Stop+N, in order to reset the NVRAM
on the SPARCclassic and get the serial port back.  A good lesson there:
don't fiddle with the flow control settings of a serial port if said
serial port is the only way to access a machine :-)  As I paid for it,
I'd like to have some token offering in return.


* In Bristol, I have a monster 21" Sun monitor which needs two people to
carry it safely (this is not a joke).



If you wish to receive any of these, email me back and we'll sort
something out.  They are currently residing in Liverpool unless
otherwise stated; if you want them and live further afield, let me know
and we may be able to arrange something.  First come, first served.


Happy hacking,

Bob

[sun]hardware

[Eric Rapilly]

I'm proud to inform you that I could find on another SPARC, equipped 
with 2 grafic board on UPA bus, one of this card, that went on the other 
SUN Ultra 60.

thus now, I have 2 sun ultra 60 with the dedicated DEBIAN cheers !!,


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Re: sun : hardware

[Bernd Zeimetz]

eric.rapilly wrote:
> hi there, i have been given another SUN ULTRA 60 withtwo 36gb harddisk.
> teh problem is, no video output! thus I suspect the grafic adapetr to be 
> dead. 
> Its on a 64 bit PCI Port. it's look to be very hard to find another similar 
> graficcard in France. If someone could indicate me were I could find one, I 
> will greatly appreciate ; bye !


Usually ebay is your friend.
or Just pull the card out and use the serial console :)

Cheers,

-- 
Bernd Zeimetz
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 


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sun : hardware

[eric.rapilly]

hi there, i have been given another SUN ULTRA 60 withtwo 36gb harddisk.
teh problem is, no video output! thus I suspect the grafic adapetr to be dead. 
Its on a 64 bit PCI Port. it's look to be very hard to find another similar 
graficcard in France. If someone could indicate me were I could find one, I 
will greatly appreciate ; bye !


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Re: Sun hardware questions...

[Martin]

> SunPCi™ PC co-processor card, in an Ultra 5 ?
> 
> I don't know where to begin, and i don't even have one, but the idea
> sounds good :-)
> 
> Is there some info docs anyhere on what and how this card can be put to 
> work ? is it just for solaris, or can it be talked to/booted from the PROM?
http://www.vdberg.org/~richard/Linux-on-SunPCi-mini-Howto/
might answer some questions.  In short it's a separte machine and you
need the Sun utility to kick it into life / do some things.  Not sure if
the app will run in the Solaris emulation mode that Linux/SPARC has, I'd
guess not as it probably requires some sort of kernel support.

> Also, i understand an ultra 5 has a PCi bus, does this mean one could 
> plug-in a usb card (and get it to work with linux), amongst other things.
Yes.  I have a printer running off this set up at the moment.

Cheers,
 - Martin
 
-- 
Martin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Seasons change, things come to pass"

Re: Sun hardware questions...

[David S. Miller]

On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 00:04:30 +
Zak Close <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> is it just for solaris, or can it be talked to/booted from the PROM?

It is just for Solaris.  The card is driven by the Solaris kernel.
Userland tools communicate with the kernel driver for the PCi card
to load up it's RAM with a sub-OS to run, provide a disk image from
which to boot, things like that.

The PCi card provides "virtual" dummy devices for the x86 processor
environment running on that card.  So there is a pseudo VGA device
et al., just the most simplest things necessary to boot up a real
system and run applications, nothing more.

Since this has become a non-Sparc/Linux discussion, please take it
to the appropriate forum.


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Sun hardware questions...

[Zak Close]

Hello all,
SunPCi™ PC co-processor card, in an Ultra 5 ?
I don't know where to begin, and i don't even have one, but the idea
sounds good :-)
Is there some info docs anyhere on what and how this card can be put to 
work ? is it just for solaris, or can it be talked to/booted from the PROM?

Also, i understand an ultra 5 has a PCi bus, does this mean one could 
plug-in a usb card (and get it to work with linux), amongst other things.

tia,
Zak.

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Re: Sun Hardware Replacement

[simon . warren]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Do a network install, all you'll need is rarp, tftp and ftp/http on another
boxen, you can then suck the files from that.

Cheers, Si

snip

>>>Hi,
>>>I was given a Sun Sparc 2 that our office had lying around.
>>>I got all prepared to install Debian Linux and have found that the CDRom is
>>>missing the drive caddy, hence I can't use it.

snip
- -- 
Todays letter from the sysadmin alphabet is ...
 "B" is for Bastard, the New Zealand one.

-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iD8DBQE7jL3XmbZ7rwJkPkARAiKIAKCE56H05JwVWEdI167vI39zMRHKeACfdPOu
kr+XoXhpTM+KiX7Dho9Wpzw=
=9ODb
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Re: Sun Hardware Replacement

[Tim Moss]

Bill Edwards wrote:

"Del Campo, Damian" wrote:



Hi,
I was given a Sun Sparc 2 that our office had lying around.
I got all prepared to install Debian Linux and have found that the CDRom is
missing the drive caddy, hence I can't use it.

It is external and the details are as follows,
Model   :   411
PN  :   595-1929-05
SN  :   141G1984

My question is thus,

   Does anybody know where I can buy a CD caddy for this ???




This is a standard CD Caddy like Sony P/N RM40-033.  Not sure who might carry
them in OZ, but you might try Trojan Computers in Abbotsford
  if you can't get them locally..  Here in Canada I get them
from Trimex Marketing in the Vancouver area under their Perfect Micro brand.
They retail for about $9 - 10 CDN.

Hope this helps,

Bill Edwards




Ebay has Sun CD-ROM drives all the time.

Re: Sun Hardware Replacement

[Bill Edwards]

"Del Campo, Damian" wrote:

> Hi,
> I was given a Sun Sparc 2 that our office had lying around.
> I got all prepared to install Debian Linux and have found that the CDRom is
> missing the drive caddy, hence I can't use it.
>
> It is external and the details are as follows,
> Model   :   411
> PN  :   595-1929-05
> SN  :   141G1984
>
> My question is thus,
>
> Does anybody know where I can buy a CD caddy for this ???
>

This is a standard CD Caddy like Sony P/N RM40-033.  Not sure who might carry
them in OZ, but you might try Trojan Computers in Abbotsford
  if you can't get them locally..  Here in Canada I get them
from Trimex Marketing in the Vancouver area under their Perfect Micro brand.
They retail for about $9 - 10 CDN.

Hope this helps,

Bill Edwards

Re: Sun Hardware Replacement

[Ian Tester]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, Del Campo, Damian wrote:

> I was given a Sun Sparc 2 that our office had lying around.
> I got all prepared to install Debian Linux and have found that the CDRom is
> missing the drive caddy, hence I can't use it.

If you've got access to a network (at work? at home?), it's easier to net-boot
the machine (with tftp) rather than hassling with CDs. There's information about
it on the  debian site (on the Sparc port page) if I remember correctly. Hell,
my Sparcstation LX doesn't even _have_ a CDROM drive.

bye

-- 
8<8<8<8<8<8<8<
Ian Tester   *8)#  \7\LINUX: because geeks will find a way
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   \7\  http://www.zipworld.com.au/~imroy

Sun Hardware Replacement

[Del Campo, Damian]

Hi,
I was given a Sun Sparc 2 that our office had lying around.
I got all prepared to install Debian Linux and have found that the CDRom is
missing the drive caddy, hence I can't use it.

It is external and the details are as follows,
Model   :   411
PN  :   595-1929-05
SN  :   141G1984

My question is thus,

Does anybody know where I can buy a CD caddy for this ???

Sun are absolutely no help and I've accidentally found in previous years web
sites of companies that deal in old Sun but can't find any of them now.

Please, I'm desperate.


  Damian Del Campo,  B.Eng (Comp Sys - Hons)
  Software Engineer,  SAGRN Project
  Phone 08 8401 7037(Flinders St)
  Fax   08 8231 1385
  E-mail[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Kernel compile on poor Sun hardware

[Karl Hammar]

When compiling kernel, theese differences are possible
configuration-vise:

  U5   E250 kernel option affected
  --    --
Disk io   ide  scsi Ultra/PCI IDE <-> scsi low lvl driver
video on mb   mach64   none console drivers
max proc. 12smp
audio on mb   yes  no   Audio support

Regards,
/Karl

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S-742 94 Östhammar +46  70 511 97 84  Computers
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---

From: Stephen Zander <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Kernel compile on poor Sun hardware
Date: 04 Dec 2000 10:22:21 -0800

> >>>>> "Andreas" == Andreas Tille <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Andreas> then ...  Moreover compiling the kernel on a differnt
> Andreas> machine than the production one is also a good idea and I
> Andreas> don't want to fiddle around with cross-compiling.
> 
> As long as you include SMP support, there are no meaningful
> differences between an E250 and an Ultra5.
> 
> Using an Ultra2, you would have to make sure you also include PCI bus
> support and support for the PCI based devices in the E250 but not in
> the Ultra2.
> 
> Any other workstation models are going to cost more than I think
> you're willing to pay :)
> 
> -- 
> Stephen
> 
> "And what do we burn apart from witches?"... "More witches!"
> 
> 
> --  
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Re: Kernel compile on poor Sun hardware

[Stephen Zander]

> "Andreas" == Andreas Tille <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Andreas> then ...  Moreover compiling the kernel on a differnt
Andreas> machine than the production one is also a good idea and I
Andreas> don't want to fiddle around with cross-compiling.

As long as you include SMP support, there are no meaningful
differences between an E250 and an Ultra5.

Using an Ultra2, you would have to make sure you also include PCI bus
support and support for the PCI based devices in the E250 but not in
the Ultra2.

Any other workstation models are going to cost more than I think
you're willing to pay :)

-- 
Stephen

"And what do we burn apart from witches?"... "More witches!"

Kernel compile on poor Sun hardware

[Andreas Tille]

Hello,

we intent to by a E250 server for production purpose.  I wonder what
to do in case I have to compile a new kernel for this hardware.  I would
really like to do this on a separate testing machine.  But I don't want
to by another E250 ;-).

Would it be possible to use a cheap Ultra for this purpose and also test
it on this system.  Well, there are obviousely differences in Harware
(the E250 will have two Sparc II processors the Ultra only one, etc.)
but for a simple test kond of: Does it work or not on this poor machine - no
warranty that it works on E250 but if not, then ...
Moreover compiling the kernel on a differnt machine than the production one
is also a good idea and I don't want to fiddle around with cross-compiling.

How is it handled on the Debian-FTP Sparc?

Kind regards

  Andreas.