Date: Sat, 26 Nov 88 13:55:32 EST From: Dwight D. McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@mckay.UUCP Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V1 #31 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Sat, 26 Nov 88 Volume 1 : Issue 31 Today's Topics: Hello (seasoned with tale of woe) Used Stuff! +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Submissions: suns-at-home \ @ea.ecn.purdue.edu | | Requests: suns-at-home-request > -- or -- | | Archives: suns-at-home-archives / ...rutgers!pur-ee!mckay!... | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 14 Nov 88 18:32:43 EST From: pur-ee!uunet.UU.NET!scg!pag (Peter Gross) Subject: Hello (seasoned with tale of woe) To: sah@uunet.UU.NET Greetings from the Big Apple, fellow s-a-h'ers! Here is a description of my system: Sun 2/120 w/4mb mem Zylogics 450 SMD controller 1 Fuji M2321/2322 130meg disk 1 Archive 20mb QIC-11 SCSI 1/4" cartridge tape Sky FP processor board SunOS 3.2 (claimed to be 3.5) installed SunOS 4.0 tapes and manuals Now comes my tale of woe.... The system was purchased from Brandeis Univ with no warantee. I checked out most parts to make sure nothing was damaged in shipping. All looked ok (well, almost ok -- the monitor had a strange problem of getting ragged-looking after it heated up, missing pixels all over the place. Turning it off an on seems to cure the problem). I sent off to my old site to get a cartridge tape made of a bunch of software. When it arrived back, I checked out that the tape could be read by doing a "tar tvf /dev/rst0". The table of contents looked fine, and I removed the tape for later use. About two days later when I was ready to actually read in the tape, the "tar xvf /dev/rst0" gave the following error on the console: st0: stintr: sense 96a0 Then I tried to read various other tapes, and all gave the same message. Even writing a new tape failed. So my 1/4" cartridge tape, a nearly worthless piece of junk when it IS working, has failed. I did clean the head, but to no avail. Any suggestions? It seems Sun would charge me almost what I paid for the whole system to fix this on a time and materials basis; and a regular maintenance contract is out of the question. Oh yeah, you might enjoy this, too .... In trying to set up the mail system, I had to change the sendmail configuration file to reflect the different machine name. Made the necessary changes, and tested with mail to myself. No mail. No syslog entries, no uucp LOGFILE entries, no trace of anything! Many hours later, the problem was uncovered: the previous owners had removed /bin/mail and made it a symbolic link to /usr/ucb/mail. What a joke! And let me tell you, that was tough to find! Luckily they had made a copy and named it /bin/oldmail or something. Otherwise, I have been SOL with no way to get on the network. Finally, a question: does anyone out there know of a way to have a Sun dial a modem connected only to a terminal (ie, not another computer), then switch roles so the terminal can login? I need this facility because the Sun is connected to phones which cannot be direct dialed from the outside. BTW, the modems used are Telebit TB+'s. Thanks for hearing me out, and I look forward to hearing from some experts. --peter gross pag@scg.uu.net [Internet] ...uunet!scg!pag [uucp] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Nov 88 16:56:45 EST From: pur-ee!indy500!rbf (Robert Fernander (SR - Indiana Sales Office)) Subject: Used Stuff! To: sah@mckay.uucp **************************************************************************** REMARKETED (REFURBISHED) SYSTEMS AVAILABILITY LIST October 31, 1988 **************************************************************************** System Price RFB3/50MQ-4 $3,500 RFB3/140M-8-P5 $12,700 RFB3/150C-4 $17,500 RFB3/160C-P14 $23,300 RFB3/160LC-P6+ $19,700 RFB3/160S-4 $14,000 RFB3/260S-8 $18,000 RFB3/260C-P14 $27,300 RFB3/260HM-P14 $22,500 RFB4/280S-P11 $54,250 ***************************************************************************** Dwight, This list might be of intrest to the the people on the net. Please have them contact me if they are intrested. Bob Fernander pur-ee!indy500!rbf ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************