Date: Wed, 11 Jun 97 07:34:19 EST From: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V10 #20 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Wed, 11 Jun 97 Volume 10 : Issue 20 Today's Topics: cheap sparc / solaris solution cheap sparc / solaris solution? (3 msgs) Mouse input overrun? Net Access for Home LAN? Solaris Dynamic IP addr? (2 msgs) Sparc IPX Video Out to PC VGA Monitor Cable ? How To ? Suns-at-Home Digest V10 #19 (2 msgs) Turning a Sparcstation Classic X into a Classic +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Submissions: suns-at-home \ | | Requests: suns-at-home-request > @net-kitchen.com | | Archives: suns-at-home-archives / | | WWW Archive access: http://www.net-kitchen.com/~sah | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 08 Jun 1997 17:41:04 -0700 From: "Gary W. Cook" Subject: cheap sparc / solaris solution To: sasharma@arcos.org How cheap is cheap? You can pick up a Sparc 1 CPU for $100. A Sparc 2 for $200. I'd spend the extra $100. Contact Recurrent Technologies (brandon@recurrent.com) and tell them to sell you a Sparc 2 motherboard, case, and power supply for $200. They will probably bite. They had stacks of them when I was over there last week. You will need a keyboard and mouse. Frame buffer. None are cheap. Recurrent has some GXPlus (up to 1280x1024) dual slot frame buffers that they are trying to sell. They want $250 each. It's a good deal if you don't mind loosing 2 of 3 Sbus slots. Otherwise, you will probably pay almost this much for a single slot color frame buffer. To get an idea of prices, check Minicomputer Exchange's web page at www.mce.com. They tend to be on the _high_ side of prices. Standard 1 / 4 mb 30 pin simms work on it. No IDE for Sun. You can use a PC power supply and case. I did this back in the early days when a real case was selling for $400 - $500. Now that they are so cheap, it isn't worth the effort to modify the connector to power the Sun and figure out a way to mount it in a PC case. A PC floppy will work, but will not eject automatically since they don't have a solenoid to do this. Monitors. Yes and no is the right answer, depending on the PC monitor. Sun supplies composite sync only. Most, but not all, PC monitors use separate horizontal and vertical sync. My NEC 6FGp has connectors for everything, so it works on a Sun, HP, SGI, or PC. For a cheap color monitor, contact Brian over at Inmartech (info@inmartech.com). They have some Sun 365-1286 15" monitors manufactured by Nokia. Offer $100 - $150 for one. He might even match the SS2 Sparc 2 price. It's not the greatest monitor ever made, but it works. They are typically dim on a Sun but can be adjusted up a little. FYI.. I have modified this monitor to work on a PC @ 1280 x 1024. It requires replacing the cable since there are no wires for separate sync signals within the cable. The monitor does have separate sync signals internally. -- Gary W. Cook, Consultant mailto:gcook@netcom.com Phone: 408-966-9209 Fax: 408-636-2739 Sun - SGI - PC - Unix - NT - WWW - Support - Integration - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 16:20:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Steven McDonald Subject: cheap sparc / solaris solution? To: Dwight McKay I only get the digest, so you may want to respond to me personally if you want a faster reply ;-) > Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 13:42:01 +0000 > From: "loki" > Subject: cheap sparc / solaris solution? > To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com what is your price range? There are sparc motherboards that will drop in to the 3/80-sparc1/2 style case, though these are about as cheap as a used sparc 10 these days (I may be a bit off here) about $1500-$2000. In the other hand a Sparc 1 with 16 meg of ram is pretty cheap, you can, but you don't want to run Solaris on one of these. > Can this hypothetical board use IDE? No (at least I've never seen a workstation that used IDE). The reason for this is that IDE can't match the proformance of SCSI. And it would cost more to include both interfaces. > 2. can one run Sun graphics on SVGA monitors? perhaps throttling the > resolution down?- I've seen a company > that makes the connectors, and I've seen posts that say 'yes, i > did it others that say no, I had no luck. Any definitive answers here? any modern multisync monitor should work. I've seen a Sony (VGA) monitor running on a Sun 3/60. I *think* the resolution on the newer machines may be a little higher but it shouldn't be a problem. What kind of monitor do you have? -Steve - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 15:38:31 +0200 (MET DST) From: Lyndon Fletcher Subject: cheap sparc / solaris solution? To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Sun has started making some MB's with PC format and PCI busses but these are hardly cheap. In fact if you are unable to afford much in the .forsale groups you probably cann't afford these motherboards. Try comp.sys.sun.wanted if you are looking for deals. Can this hypothetical board use IDE? I doubt it. IDE is a fudge that drive makers made back in the days of DOS. It is a single tasking standard which gives good benchmarks if you are only running one job. It does not do well for multitasking OS, even on a PeeCee people use SCSI on OS's like NT and OS/2. An IDE unix box would be very slow.... What you've probably seen is a company offering a board to allow Sun Monitors to be used on a PeeCee as this is quite popular. This is like asking "can a car go faster than 100MPH without saying which car your talking about. The problem with asking this question is that SVGA is not a standard. A PeeCee running at 800x600 in 16 colors is "SVGA" as many resellers will try to tell you.... You need a monitor able to run at the scan rate generated by the framebuffer your Sun uses. Some SVGA multiscans will, some won't. Get the frequency then check the monitor spec. [ I've used two different MultiSync monitors here at Network Kitchen. Match ] [ the scan frequency and it works fine. Access Development (203-968-0214) ] [ makes a VGA to Sun 13W3 adaptor, PN# 1395. --ddm ] > >If these 2 conditions are met, all I would need is the motherboard, >and I could reuse old peecee hardware lying around here. >That would leave solaris, preferably at the student discount >rate. Even if you could find a MB it is unlikely to use PeeCee hardware as drivers will not be writen for it. > >If all else fails, which of the used resellers are a good, reliable >deal? Get a SS1 a 4/110 or an ELC/SLC. The SS1 and 4 series will need a monitor, the ELC/ELC have monitors but will need an external disk box. Fletch - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 04 Jun 1997 13:31:10 -0400 From: Ken Hansen Subject: cheap sparc / solaris solution? To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Hello, Mike (at http://204.92.19.89/sunstuff/sunused.html ) has an IPC available for $100 without RAM or HD, also Ganymede Systems and Technology (at http://www.ezy.net/gstek/ ) has an IPC w/16 Meg RAM, 424 HD, and keyboard/monitor for $475, and ther are others (I don't have links handy), but these deals are representative. You will not be able to use IDE drives with Sun, must be SCSI - RAM for an IPC is 9 bit (parity) 30 Pin SIMMs (100 ns or better?). I woudl suggest getting a complete system, or use the Sun box as a headless machine across a network, displaying X Windows on a PC. Also, be aware that Suns need 512 byte blocks from CD ROM drives, not 2K blocks like most PCs use. I have been a big proponent of the Viewsonic adapter for $15 to allow you to use a high-end multi-sync monitor as a Sun monitor. If you have any further questions, please feel free to email me directly at khansen@njcc.com. Good luck, Ken Hansen - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Jun 97 9:42:03 PDT From: "Jeremy D. Worrells - 4097358" Subject: Mouse input overrun? To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com, port-sun3@netbsd.org I have a Sun 3/60 running NetBSD-Sun3 1.2 and SunOS 4.1.1. Under either OS, I get a strange error on boot, complaining about an input overrun on the mouse device. Is this a common problem? My cursor will occasionally jump to the top of the screen when running X. I suspect that this may be due to scratches on the mousepad, but thought I would ask people with more experience. Does anyone think it would be worth it to try and adapt a PC type serial mouse to my Sun? Thanks. -- Jeremy Worrells Undergraduate - Computer Science jworrell@nunic.nu.edu National University jworrell@priacc.com http://nunic.nu.edu/~jworrell - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Jun 97 12:33:31 PDT From: dar@synthesis.com (David Reisner) Subject: Net Access for Home LAN? To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com I need mail forwarding and Internet access for the small Unix LAN in my home office (in GTE territory, Los Angeles/Santa Monica), as discussed below. ISDN or analog. I expect about 1 hour of connect time (incoming or outgoing) a day. I'm looking for service that is technically sensible and is at a price that makes sense for a private individual. But so far, no luck. Surely *somebody* out there must have solved this problem? Thanks very much. -David dar@synthesis.com --------------------------------- Since about '90 a local university has been my mail forwarder, via 28.8 analog modem, long distance phone call, and uucp. But they've had a policy change and won't be doing it anymore. So I'm looking for a new connection. What I want seems simple to me, but perhaps it falls in the cracks. I've got a small hetrogenous ethernet in my office, with an SGI and a Sun SS 1+ w/ SunOS 4.1.3 (with the "stock" sendmail) as my mailhost. Synthesis.com is NIC registered, and I have a registered class C network (a full set of IP addresses already available). I would settle for someone to act as my uucp forwarder, via 28.8 modem, but I've also got an (old) ISDN bridge. It would be much nicer for me to be able to get an analog or digital dial-up to the net so I have full access in addition to mail forwarding. Ideally the connection would be on-demand in both directions. Since I have an ISDN bridge, it seems like it would be nice to avoid running PPP or Slip with the attendant efficiency and configuration problems. And no more long distance phone calls. I'm not sure what the best solution is. An account that will let me on-demand bridge my static IP space to the Internet? Bridge my IP space to the net with IP address "spoofing" in the bridge/router? Bridge my IP space or just a single address to a single IP with "spoofing"? Analog modem with PPP/Slip and with IP address mapping? A shell account and collect mail via POP (ugh?!)? Finally, if out of all this I also end up with the ability to access my network when I'm traveling - from clients' networks or dial-up via a portable PC - I would be well pleased. And if the provider can also host a web site, that would be great too (I have several server packages on my SGI and WinNT boxes - but no outside connections). >From a technical perspective, I think I understand all of this reasonably well. But I don't know what the real-world alternatives are in the present market. - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 14:50:23 -0700 (PDT) From: Curt Sampson Subject: Solaris Dynamic IP addr? To: "Sheldon T. Hall" <76701.103@CompuServe.COM> > Does the built-in PPP support on Solaris 2.5.1 include dynamic IP address > capability when the Solaris machine is used as a dial-up TCP/IP router? It does, but before I upgraded to it, I'd grab a copy of pppd and try that, first. I use it for dialup and routing on my NetBSD systems at home, and it works fine, so I assume it should work ok for others, too. I do know of at least one SunOS user who is using this successfully to connect with his ISP, though he's not doing the routing bit. Package: ppp Version: 2.3b4 Current Vers: 2.3b4 Maintainer: Paul Mackerras Archive Site: cs.anu.edu.au:/pub/software/ppp Also, the Solaris PPP is a real pain to set up. cjs Curt Sampson cjs@portal.ca Info at http://www.portal.ca/ Internet Portal Services, Inc. Through infinite myst, software reverberates Vancouver, BC (604) 257-9400 In code possess'd of invisible folly. - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 07:19:02 -0400 From: ron@mlfarm.com (Ronald Florence) Subject: Solaris Dynamic IP addr? To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com "Sheldon T. Hall" writes: My primary use for the IPX would be as a router, giving my home network dial-on-demand access to the Internet through a local ISP. DP-4.0 would give you dial-on-demand access to the Internet through a local ISP, with either Sunos or Solaris. To function as a router, your ISP would have to agree to publish and route a list of static IP addresses. You might find it easier to establish one address and use proxy-servers to provide nntp, www, and other services to the client machines on your home network. -- Ronald Florence Maple Lawn Farm, Stonington, CT ron@mlfarm.com http://www.connix.com/~mlfarm - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 05 Jun 1997 23:08:08 -0700 From: ">mag<" Subject: Sparc IPX Video Out to PC VGA Monitor Cable ? How To ? To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com I've got the spex on the DB13W3 and the VGA cable, but what I don't know is if the obvious similarly labeled pins are 1:1 compatible ? Does anybody have a solution for this ? i.e. once again, How can I make a cable from an IPX to a VGA monitor ? This is a very kewl group ! I just found it in a search engine. I hope this posting gets through :-) Many thanks in advance ! Mike rasmas@kudonet.com - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 18:10:32 -0500 (CDT) From: Robert Bonomi Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V10 #19 To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com The closest I know of is the "OPUS SYSTEMS" 'sparc on a card' boards, that plug into a PC ISA expansion slot. and -no-, they can't use IDE. SCSI only. + 2. can one run Sun graphics on SVGA monitors? perhaps throttling the + resolution down?- I've seen a company + that makes the connectors, and I've seen posts that say 'yes, i + did it others that say no, I had no luck. Any definitive answers here? depends on the machine, -and- the monitor. a *few* of the video boards have the capability to go 'down' to SVGA type resolutions. most do -not-. Additionally, the monitor *must* be capable of coping with "composite sync _separate_".. this is -different- from the 'separate H/V drive' used by standard PC video cards. watch 'misc.forsale.computers.workstation'. Hugo@apcom.com, and dcase@case.com, _among_others_ are reliable sources. - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 21:14:47 -0400 From: adh@an.bradford.ma.us (Sandwich Maker) Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V10 #19 To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com 1. is anyone making cheap sparc motherboards (with low end cpus - expensive 10GHz need not apply) that can be plunked into cheapo PC cases? Can this hypothetical board use IDE? the only sparc board i know of that's made to fit a peecee case is from sun and has an ultrasparc on it, so it's probably not cheap... it can probably use ide; it has a pci bus -- dunno if solaris has a driver though. you should be able to get a ss1/ss1+ mother and pizza box for ~$300. then you'd need a cg3 fb [$100? falling rapidly], kbd, mouse... your best bet is probably an entire cheap system like an ipc, or elc if it's an exceptionally good deal. 2. can one run Sun graphics on SVGA monitors? perhaps throttling the resolution down?- I've seen a company that makes the connectors, and I've seen posts that say 'yes, i did it others that say no, I had no luck. Any definitive answers here? i have a sony 15sx connected to my un-throttled cg6. it's rock-steady and sharp at 1152x900x66, and the newer cheaper 100sx has the same specs on paper. i think most peecee monitors smaller than 17" wouldn't do it as well if at all. If all else fails, which of the used resellers are a good, reliable deal? one that's within arm's reach is the most reliable -- it's easy to bring your sparc back if/when it doesn't work. i'm spoiled though -- there are probably more than half a dozen within an hour's drive of here. _______________________________________________________________________________ Andrew Hay | Forts are not distinguished from fortresses internet rambler | by the presence or absence of breastworks adh@an.bradford.ma.us | nor by the size of their buttresses - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 10:32:32 -0700 (PDT) From: Curt Sampson Subject: Turning a Sparcstation Classic X into a Classic To: Suns at Home I've just acquired a Sparcstation Classic X, which is the X-terminal version of the Sparcstation Classic. Unfortunately, thought the PROM appears to have all of the usual command for booting from a disk, I've attached a disk to it and it won't recognise it, not even with probe-scsi. Nor will it run the NetBSD Sun-4m bootstrap from the network. Does anyone know what magic I have to do to get this thing to believe it's not an X terminal? Must I replace the PROM? Please send a copy of the reply directly to me, as well as to the list. Thanks. cjs Curt Sampson cjs@portal.ca Info at http://www.portal.ca/ Internet Portal Services, Inc. `And malt does more than Milton can Vancouver, BC (604) 257-9400 To justify God's ways to man.' - ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************