Date: Mon, 16 Jun 97 16:03:28 EST From: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V10 #21 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Mon, 16 Jun 97 Volume 10 : Issue 21 Today's Topics: cheap low end Suns Cheap SPARC / Solaris solution GCC and Glibc Binaries Mouse input overrun? Sparc CD-Roms and floppies. Sun 3/110 issues (ESDI disk & tape boot) sun 3/60 x-term Suns-at-Home Digest V10 #20 Weather station on IPX's serial port +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | 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: Wed, 11 Jun 97 14:37:42 -0500 From: jmz@onyx.bcl.net Subject: cheap low end Suns To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com For OLD Suns,or anything else,call up the nonprofit,church-run-type places that take any old business equipment for a tax deduction.Occasionally you will hit paydirt.A friend got an ELC with country kit for $10 and a 1 gig SCSI drive in an external box for $75.I would have paid the $75 for the box... - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 18:29:24 -0700 From: Greg Earle Subject: Cheap SPARC / Solaris solution To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Gary Cook writes: > How cheap is cheap? You can pick up a [...] Sparc 2 for $200. > [...] 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. > > 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. Is this for real? I haven't seen any bare-bones SPARCstation 2's for less than $295 out there, much less $200. And as for a GXplus, I was just looking one up yesterday on the Web and found two places selling them for like $795. If they're really part with an SS2 + GXplus for $450, that's a phenomenal deal. (The GXplus does 1280x1024 & it's a 4 Mb framebuffer, double-buffered.) Drop a Weitek PowerUP in and you're (sorta) stylin' ... Contrast this to, say, a local dealer who just dropped a brochure in my work mail slot ... www.CompXpressInc.COM, which features the following: Sun SPARCstation 2 SERVER 40 MHZ CPU 32 MB RAM 424 MB HARD DRIVE 3.5" FLOPPY CHASSIS, POWER SUPPLY & MOTHER BOARD PRICE $ 1195 Somehow I don't think 32 Mb of RAM, a 424 Mb hard disk and a floppy is worth $1000 ... (-: Then, as another example, there's their SPARCstation 10/51 "blowout special": Sun SPARCstation 10-51 SERVER SM51 MODULE, 50 MHZ CPU WITH 1 MB CACHE 64 MB RAM 1 GB HARD DRIVE 3.5" FLOPPY CHASSIS, POWER SUPPLY & MOTHER BOARD PRICE $ 3195 Gee, $3200 ... should I get that Pentium II 266 MHz UltraSCSI system or this lusty SPARCstation 10 that's 7 times slower ... hmmn, let me think ... - Greg - ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 10:00:57 +0100 (BST) From: David Brown Subject: GCC and Glibc Binaries To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Hi. Being the lazy oath I am, I was wondering if anyone had compiled glibc for GCC 2.7.0 running on Sunos 4.1.3. The problem with my system is the lack of an ANSI C Compiler. Attempting to compile glibc seems to get most of the way, but dies when compiling the Termios section. Any ideas? The include files supplied with Glibc 1.0.9 do not seem to make reference to certain functions like TCSETAW, although these are defined in /usr/include/sys. However in the later case, an undefinied variable T is referenced... Thank, Dave. dave@fingermouse.demon.co.uk - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 10:27:31 +0200 (MET DST) From: Lyndon Fletcher Subject: Mouse input overrun? To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com At 07:34 11/06/97 EST, you wrote: > >Suns-at-Home Digest Wed, 11 Jun 97 Volume 10 : Issue 20 > >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 > I would check that your system has a proper earth connection at the mains. I had exactly the same problem that cleared once the earth was made better. Fletch - ------------------------------ Date: 15 Jun 1997 23:18:04 GMT From: erdem@newyorkcity.ny (theErdster:) Subject: Sparc CD-Roms and floppies. To: culist-suns-at-home@cunews.carleton.ca Does anyone here have any information on a cheaper solution for attaching a CD-ROM and floppy drive to my Sparc 5? I cringe whenever I see the listings 600$ for a 4X CD-R drive, 200$ for a floppy. BTW self ejecting floppy is preferred, if only because I want to be safe in the case of a program which may, for example, update a floppy before it ejects it. Thanks, any help is appreciated! -- an ERDEM ONDER transmission Bachelor of Computer Science I -- Money Option Senate Committee for Technology, Society and Environment - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 01:38:32 -0500 (CDT) From: Dean Grover Subject: Sun 3/110 issues (ESDI disk & tape boot) To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Hi fellow sun users, To my dismay, my boot disk sd0 on my Sun 3/110 has crashed, leaving my system dead to the world. If anyone has an ESDI disk drive they are interested in parting with that will work on this system, please let me know. Also, the tape drive on the system was identified as "st1", and I'm looking for the correct boot command to boot from tape. I've tried several variaions of "b st(0,X,0)", but so far no luck. Any help will be appreciated!! Dean ============================================================================== Dean Grover funhouse@netcom.com - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 97 1:51:33 EDT From: Troy Wollenslegel Subject: sun 3/60 x-term To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com I have been trying to get a sun 3/60 set up as an x-terminal. I got the x-kernel from sol.ctr.columbia.edu, I am using a linux box as a server for these x-terms. Ther kernel is found when it tries to boot, but I get a panic:init died message.. the 3/60 has 24 meg of ram.. that should be enough.. here is the last few lines of messages. hostname: xhost domainname: (none) root on server:/usr/export/root/Xkernel.sun3 fstype nfs swap on ns0b fstype spec size 23520K dump on ns0b fstype spec size 23596K panic: init died syncing file systems... done. 00096 low-memory static kernel pages 00037 additional static and sysmap kernel pages 00000 dynamic kernel data pages 00001 additional user structure pages 00000 segmap kernel pages 00000 segvn kernel pages 00000 current user process pages 00000 user stack pages 00134 total pages (134 chunks) dumping to vp f060614, offset 44848 0 total pages, dump failed: error 19 rebooting... if anyone has any ideas, it would be nice to have a nice size monitor and system working. -- Troy Wollenslegel - troy@intranet.org - http://home.intranet.org/~troy My life has a superb cast, but I can't figure out the plot. - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 15:53:00 -0500 From: Jim Thompson Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V10 #20 To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Someone asked: > > Can this hypothetical board use IDE? And then various replies: > No IDE for Sun. > 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. > SCSI on OS's like NT and OS/2. An IDE unix box would be very slow.... Not necessarily so. For older drives and controllers, true, but not so with 'modern' IDE ctrls and drives. SCSI on older 'operating systems' (such as DOS) may actually be *slower* than IDE. (The physics of 'why' won't be discussed here, contact me privately if you really must know. Its got to do with DOS polling and SCSI cmd setup times.) > 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. Just to set the record straight. a) All Tadpole SPARCbooks (except SPARCbook 2) have supported IDE disks. SPARCbook (aka SPARCbook 1) because 2.5" SCSI disks were rare as hen's teeth, and because the IDE controller came 'for free'. SPARCbook 3 series have all supported IDE disks via PCMCIA, and the very latest generation of the SPARCbook3 series has IDE disks for the 'main' disk. Again, in order to keep b) Solaris 2.5 (from Sun) also supports IDE (yes, even on SPARC) via PCMCIA. Getting an SBus PCMCIA controller is another issue alltogether. c) Very, very old Suns used ESDI drives, hung off SCSI->ESDI controllers. -- Jim Thompson / Smallworks, Inc. / jim@smallworks.com 512 338 0619 phone / 512 338 0625 fax HTML: The 3270 of the 90s WinNT: The OSI of the 90s - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 01:06:32 -0700 (PDT) From: sjm Subject: Weather station on IPX's serial port To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com I have a Sparc IPX that I have been attempting, unsuccessfully :-(, to read the serial output of my Peet Bros. weather station on serial port A. The weather station puts out a steady stream of ASCII characters at 2400 baud, 8 bits, no parity. It only uses 2 pins of the DB-25 serial cable, and therefore does not support any hardware (or software) flow control. For reasons beyond my limited comprehension, I cannot seem to get the Sun to read the data reliably. Why is it dropping so many characters at 2400 baud??? Here is a typical example of the output I am getting from the weather station: !!0000007C025402DD----02D7--------00A1050302C10000 !!0000007C02502DD----02D7--------00A1050302C10000 <- dropped char !!0000007C025402DD----02D7--------00A1050302C10000 !!0000007C025402DD----02D7--------00A1050302C10000 !!0000007C025402DD----02D7--------00A1050302C10000 !!0000007C025402DD----02D7--------00A1050302C10000 !!0000007C025402DD----02D7--------00A1050302C10000 !!0000007C025402DD----02D7--------00A1050302C10000 !!0000007C025402DD----02D7--------00A1050302C10000 !!0000007C025402DD----02D7--------00A1050302C10000 !!0000007C025402DD----02D7--------00A1050302C10000 !!0000007C025402DD----02D7-------00A1050302C10000 <- dropped char Things I have tried ------------------- [0. Testing the cable - stock Sun serial cable - tests fine, external modem works great at 38400 with same cable] 1. setting up /etc/remote (in many combinations) and using tip to read the port - get dropped characters, and then when I try tip a second time I get the following error: tip: /dev/cua/a: No such device or address all ports busy In fact, tip works every other time, and every other time I get the same error as above. 2. Every conceivable combination of stty(1) options from the shell, like so: (stty 2400 -parity -echo -crtscts ...; cat) < /dev/cua/a So far I have yet to find the magic combination of options. Sometimes the port gets locked up when I interrupt with Ctrl-C (I suspect an issue with controlling TTY). 3. a) Writing C code to open the device and making termios(3) calls to set up the port b) Doing the same in perl, using its POSIX module. Always results in dropped characters like above. Questions ----------------------- 1. So what is the big secret about reading an instrument on a serial port? I can do it under Linux without dropping or otherwise corrupting characters. While I have use of this Sun, I would like to actually use it. 2. For reading input from an instrument, why does /dev/term/a never work while /dev/cua/a, which I understand to be a "callout" device suitable for modems and bidirectional devices, does? 3. What good is the port monitor? -or- Why do changes to /etc/ttydefs, which are supposedly used by the port monitor to set the state of a port, never seem to have any effect? Despite whatever settings I have in /etc/ttydefs, when I open the device it is invariably at 9600 baud and other settings I don't want. Any advice greatly appreciated! -- Steve McCarthy Author RightOn 2.4 for Windows sjm@halcyon.com The Power Mouse Utility http://www.halcyon.com/sjm/righton.html Current wind and temp at my house: http://www.halcyon.com/sjm/wx/latest.shtml - ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************