[Suns-at-Home] Software for a 386i

[Scott Stevens]

Well, I took up a list member's offer and made the trip to bring home a Sun 386i machine.  Now I need to locate system software to run on it.  I have searched 'round the net and the 386i sites almost all appear to have gone offline.  ftp://sun386i.mon.org/pub/sun386i looks like the site that I wish was still mirrored somewhere.  My understanding is that this 386i will run  SunOS 4.0.1 or 4.0.2.  It looks, after a trawl all about on the net, as though nobody has ever ported any other OS to this orphaned odd-bird box.  I often use NetBSD to 'test out' classic UNIX hardware, that won't be possible on the 386i.

Does anybody have a suggestion how I can find the required OS for this box?  I don't have anything but the box, so will run it headless, like I run little lunchbox Sparcs.  Any pointers to where I can find the pinout to adapt a serial console, or is the pinout 'standard' on the back?  There seems to be little info at all online about this thing.  (I understand some of the politics of it, but does everybody universally hate these things?)

I am a somewhat collector of vintage UNIX hardware, particularly the odd stuff that used Intel processors.  I also have an Altos 586 (8086 machine that runs an ancient System 3 derived version of Microsoft Xenix).

I also have bunches and bunches of old Sparc boxes and am about to start posting giveaways here to thin out the herd.