Date: Sun, 27 Dec 98 09:36:00 EST From: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V11 #36 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Sun, 27 Dec 98 Volume 11 : Issue 36 Today's Topics: CD Roms that work With Sun Equipment/SparcLinux 5.2 Implementing PPP on a Sun 3/80 Problems with 4.1.1 and Fujitsu M2444 9 track drive Solaris 2.6 loads, won't boot Sparc2 Suns-at-Home Digest V11 #35 (2 msgs) Upgrading to a SPARCstation 2 Will IBM DCHS drive work in Sparc 2? +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Submissions: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com | | Requests: suns-at-home-request@net-kitchen.com | | WWW Archive access: http://www.net-kitchen.com/~sah | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1998 17:02:03 -0500 From: "DUDLEY, Scott" Subject: CD Roms that work With Sun Equipment/SparcLinux 5.2 To: "'Suns-At-Home --Submissions'" Hi all and Merry Christmas I just received 2 scsi cd roms for christmas they are : Plextor PX-32TSi SCSI internal Yamaha CRW 4260t SCSI internal 4x2x6 cdwriter/rewriter Both of these units have the options to set these for use with the majority of Unix Workstations. I just installed Redhat Linux Sparc version 5.2 on a 1+ , IPC and a Sparc 10. They Worked like a charm! I thought I would let everyone know since it seems a commonly brought up question. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays Scott Dudley AS/400 Operations Analyst (IBM Certified Specialist) SHL Systemhouse Ltd (A Division of MCI Worldcom) Ph.(403)508-4592 Fx.(403)508-4669 sdudley@shl.com - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 09:35:50 -0500 (EST) From: Joe Spainhour Subject: Implementing PPP on a Sun 3/80 To: hregan@my-dejanews.com The patch it is talking about is a module that you have to load into the kernel. The module is part of the ppp distribution. I think it is call ppp_mod.o .The readme file should explain how to do this. Joe - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 11:35:10 -0800 From: Rick Copeland Subject: Problems with 4.1.1 and Fujitsu M2444 9 track drive To: Suns-at-Home-List@tigger.net-kitchen.com Suns-at-Home-List, I have a Sun 3/160 running SunOs 4.1.1 that includes a Xylogic 472 tape interface. The Xylogic 472 interface is connected to a Sun (Fujitsu M2444A) 9 track mag tape drive. The drive checks out when the stand alone diagnostics is run and I am confident that it is in good working order but the Xylogics interface and the operating system I am not sure of. When I try to read or write to the drive I get an I/O error. The transport will move the tape around a little and then stops. The cabling has been checked out as well and is correctly connected. The commands I have used are as follows: dd if=/home/rgc/boot ibs=512 of=/dev/nrmt0 obs=512 mt -f /dev/nrmt0 fsf 1 The following command however seems to work OK: mt -f /dev/nrmt0 rewind Does anybody have any ideas what the problem might be or perhaps know of a diagnostics procedures for the Xylogics 472 so that I can check it's functionality? Sincerely, Rick Copeland - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 09:21:21 -0600 (CST) From: John Petty d-4420 (504)257-1925 Subject: Solaris 2.6 loads, won't boot To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Hi everyone, I just joined the list yesterday and I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one. ;^) I have a Sparc-2, 64mb ram, 2gb Quantum, 424mb Sun/Seagate, Toshiba 6x CD. I had Solaris 2.6 up and running with no difficulties until 2 out of 3 of the 424mb drives died. This is government surplused equipment. Took out the bad 424 drives, put in the Quantum. It formerly booted off of SCSI #3 and now I have it booting on SCSI #2 - the 2GB Quantum. The original install used the first-issue of 2.6, the latest install is the 5/98 build of 2.6 I can boot with the CD, quit the install program and mount the Quantum manually - everything appears to be there. At first, it couldn't "find the boot device" ... I changed the EEPROM cfg and it now finds the drive but complains that it can't "find the boot file". I boot with the CD, mount the disk manually and write down the exact path and name of the boot file and enter it into the EEPROM. I tried both the direct path and the linked path. It already had the linked path (the default) but I had to try it again after the direct path failed too. It still can't find the boot file. What's the deal? Is there a problem with the 5/98 build? Does Solaris have a problem with Quantum SCSI-2 drives? Should I swap the SCSI ID's back and boot from SCSI #3? I browsed through the digest archive and didn't see any similar problems. Perhaps the EEPROM is finding the disk but going to the wrong slice? I tried to be certain it was looking at slice 0 (root). The original was simply "disk@2:a". TIA, John E. Petty "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics, 1949, (forecasting the relentless march of science) - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1998 23:40:15 -0500 From: "Arthur J. Byrnes" Subject: Sparc2 To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com >From: "Paul Khoury" >Subject: Upgrading to a SPARCstation 2 >I'm going to buy a new SPARCstation 2, and finally get a CRT, >to replace my old (and still untested) IPC. Is there any >advantages besides speed and the built-in CG3 that I will >have with the SPARC 2? The Sparc2 does not have a "built-in" cg3. Unless you have a video sbus card, the Sparc2 has no video output. >I'd also like to hook up a Wyse 60 dumb terminal, but don't >know what kind of cables I need. A null modem cable. You can use the null-modem cable and the dumb terminal to test your untested IPC. If you do not connect a keyboard to the IPC (or almost any Sun cpu) it will try and boot using the serial port "A" as the console. Even if there are no disks, it is still a good way to see if the cpu is operational. >Also, can almost any SCSI-2 HD be used in a SPARC? Actually, Sparc 1, 2 and that vintage can even use a SCSI 1. The Sun SCSI interface is pretty forgiving. Lots of people worry about finding the correct format.dat numbers, but I have gotten many to work by just using numbers from similar size drives... >It supposedly comes with 400MB, either 1 400 or 2 200's, but I >might want to upgrade to Solaris 2.6 Get one of those <$200 2 gig SCSI drives from one of the on-line auctions, and just go to Solaris 2.7 >Also, is 64MB the maximum I can go on that machine? Back when these were new products, there was a third party memory solution that brought it up to 128 (I think) but of the hundreds of these stations I've seen, I've only seen 2 of those upgrades. (Anybody else remember these?) >Last question, anyone interested in a used AS-IS IPC? What does it have in/with it? (Memory, keyboard, etc...) >I won't need it once I get my SPARC 2 up. If you want to do some networking, you could use the IPC with the terminal and the Sparc2 with its crt and have your own home network... Good Luck, ========================================= Arthur J. Byrnes Disclaimer; These views are those only of the author, Arthur. Be sure to visit my Web Site. http://www.ajb.com My South African pictures are now on line. My San Francisco pictures are now on line. This message is copyright by the author, and is not to be publicly distributed without permission. ========================================= - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 09:39:33 -0600 From: "Salmon,William E." Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V11 #35 To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com, From experience with my own Sparc 2, 64mb is the max you can install. I have heard of a memory board that lets you add more, but I have never seen one. As far as I have found, any hard drive that fits will work. Mine came with two 1GB drives, and I replaced them with 2GB drives. This was with Solaris 2.5.1, so I can't say for the older SunOS. - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1998 03:55:06 +0000 From: Stephen Lyons Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V11 #35 To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com > Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:59:09 -0600 (CST) > From: Dan Storie > Subject: floppy problem > To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com > > I have 2 sparcstations, SunOS 4.1.1, bought from their owner who used > them at the same facility in about '93 or so. The floppy gives the > same error on both machines. I sometimes use a couple of Sparc2 at work and I have found the same problem with the floppy drive - I don't think its the drive thats the problem but the disks! Aside: assuming of course that the drives are clean! (its amazing how much crud accumulates in a drive that has been used say 10 times in the last five years). I use mount /pcfs to use MSDos disks to import/export small amounts of data to my Wintel PC - but the disks *must* have been formatted with an early version of Dos, say 3.30 - once they have seen 6.2 or such like the Sun can tell the disk is not blank but it cannot understand the boot sector information and as far as I can tell will not let it be overwritten. Of course getting/making 3.30 Dos disks is a bit tricky from a PC when your only old Bootable disk is 5.25 size and the PC can only boot from the 3.5 (A) Drive - a PC can only produce boot disks for the operating system currently running on it but I only had to swap them over the once. I haven't tried it but I think 'fdformat' has switches to format a *BLANK* disk with a (Psuedo) MSDos 3.30 boot sector - but obviously for copyright reasons although it can leave the space for the MSDos 'system' files to create an true, actual MSDos 'boot' a.k.a a system disk, it will not have those files [MSDOS.SYS IO.SYS ?] that a PC requires... Not that this is an issue for a Sparc 8-) . I would speculate that the only way to use floppies that have seen a MSDos 6.2 format would be to physically (bulk) erase them - you might try leaving them on the monitor when it is switched on and goes through the deguss process? I guess from the error message: fd0: write failed (40 1 0) that you are using Double density (40 track, 720K) floppies - the drive will handle High density (80 track 1.4M) disks Stephen Lyons (suns-at-work hopeing to be a suns-at-home) -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ |To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer - | |for maximum efficency I recommend you stick solely to products | |produced by or for a corporation run by a certain bespecticaled | |Billionaire...! | | | |All views protrayed within unless otherwise stated are those of myself| |not my family, friends, employer or the cat who's I am. | | | |For further information check out our family site: | | http:\\www.lyons.enta.net | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1998 02:07:26 -0500 (EST) From: Mike Frisch Subject: Upgrading to a SPARCstation 2 To: Paul Khoury On Tue, 15 Dec 1998, Paul Khoury wrote: > Also, can almost any SCSI-2 HD be used in a SPARC? It supposedly > comes with 400MB, either 1 400 or 2 200's, but I might want to upgrade > to Solaris 2.6 (I have 2.4 now), thus needing more space. Yes, I have successfully used Ultra SCSI drives in these old SPARC machines (including my SS2 and SS1+s). You just have to remember that the boot partition (not drive) must be 1GB or less. The old PROMs do not know how to translate anything beyond 1GB. If you want to use wide drives (which is a good idea for moving these drives to a newer machine in the future), you'll need a wide to narrow cable adapter, but they will work as well. > Also, is 64MB the maximum I can go on that machine? I believe there was also a daughtercard available that would allow an additional 64MB RAM. Save your money for a SS5 base instead of wasting it on memory. Mike. ====================================================================== Mike Frisch Email: mfrisch@saturn.tlug.org Northstar Technologies WWW: http://saturn.tlug.org/~mfrisch Newmarket, Ontario, CANADA ====================================================================== - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 09:47:46 -0800 From: Rik Schneider Subject: Will IBM DCHS drive work in Sparc 2? To: markk@openetix.com, Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com I haven't tried that combo but I have had a 2G IBM Drive running in a SS1+ for about a year. -- Rik Schneider Unix Systems Administrator Net Asset LLC 1315 Van Ness Ave Suite 103 Fresno CA 93721 (559) 490-4000 -- When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively. In a way, the next move is up to him. -- R. A. Lafferty - ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************