Date: Sat, 26 Feb 00 16:59:03 EST From: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #6 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Sat, 26 Feb 00 Volume 13 : Issue 6 Today's Topics: an old SPARC ELC workstation grayscale monitor and classic parts Home firewalls Question on connecting dumb terminals to a Classic Sparc: RAID Sparc 2 loopback test Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #5 (3 msgs) Sun Stuff for sale. who makes/advertises/sells good mono monitors? +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | 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: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 16:40:01 +0100 From: Jonathan Thornburg Subject: an old SPARC ELC workstation To: Suns-at-Home submissions In SAH volume 13, issue 5, Daniel Clark asks > I might be able to obtain an old SPARC ELC workstation. The processor > is equivalent to a 486DX -50, and it has 40MB RAM (max 48MB). It has > 6GB of hard drive space, a tape backup, and a CD-ROM. Is it possible to > refurbish this box? The ELC (like its earlier/slower sibling the SLC) was originally sold by Sun as a diskless workstation: the processor board lives in in the back of a Sun 17" mono monitor, and there is *no* room in the box for any additional devices. The box has connectors on the back for ethernet and scsi (scsi-1, peak speed 5 megabytes/second). Your system's disk, tape, and cdrom *must* all be scsi devices, and live in an external box or boxes. The ELC processor is about the speed of a 486/33 for integer work, or a 486/50 for floating point. It's rated at 18 spec92int and 18 spec92fp; I've never seen spec95 or spec2000 ratings for it. There are 4 SIMM slots, each taking a 4MB or 16MB SIMM ==> max memory is 64MB. The mono monitor is very sharp, and will stay that way even if it's old and has gotten banged around a bit. But with a 1 bit/pixel frame buffer, you're not going to get antialiased fonts... :( In interactive use, an ELC feels a lot faster than the cpu speed would lead you to expect (certainly a *lot* faster than similar-speed 486 boxes running as X terminals), because the 1 bit/pixel frame buffer means scrolling etc don't have as many Kbytes to push around as in color systems. > If so, what would be a good place to send it for > refurbishing? *If* it needs refurbishing... My experience is that any competent hardware technician (= only a tiny fraction of hardware technicians :( ) can work on an external box full of scsi disks/tapes/cdroms/etc. For the monitor/cpu box, since you can buy these for US$100 or so (sans memory) from any of a number of used-computer dealers, [I have had good experience with Minicomputer Exchange, (USA) 408-733-4400, info@mce.com, but there are also plenty of other good dealers around.] it's probably not worth paying anyone's hourly rate to work on it. - Jonathan - ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 18:17:45 -0500 From: adh@an.bradford.ma.us (Sandwich Maker) Subject: grayscale monitor and classic parts To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com "From: lakin@pgc.com (Fred Lakin) "Subject: advice sought on dying grayscale monitor " "Well, my trusty old Sun 19" grayscale monitor -- 365-1154-01, "model DM-8200, Sept 93 -- finally bit the dust. " "Got up one morning and screen is black, little green light in "lower left corner dark. When I turn the power off and then "back on, the little green light flashes on twice but then "goes dark and stays dark. random thought -- are you sure it's really the monitor? that green light might mean there's no signal - your fb's crapped out. "- ------------------------------ " "From: "Sheldon T. Hall" "Subject: Ready for parts for Classic [] "See the Sun CD-ROM FAQ for compatible devices. You'll need something that "will read 512-byte sectors, rather than the 2048-byes ones most PC-oriented there's a scsi command for setting block size; late-model solarii can send it to cd drives to access either 512B or 2048B sectors. if you're proficient in forth you could probably figure out a way to patch the obp boot code to send it to the cdrom before attempting to access it for booting. when i was shopping for a cdrom last year, i got this far before i stumbled on a new-leftover 2x ss5 drive for $35... i still would like to know how to do it. __________________________________________________________________________ Andrew Hay I used to be pessimistic but it never works out internet rambler I believe that it's unlucky to be superstitious adh@an.bradford.ma.us DRIVE NOW -- TALK LATER - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2000 05:31:46 -0800 (PST) From: David Wolfskill Subject: Home firewalls To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com >Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 10:02:51 +0000 (GMT) >From: Charles Lindsey >Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #4 > On Tue, 25 Jan 2000 20:34:06 -0800 (PST) > David Wolfskill said... >> At home, in preparation for the DSL install, I picked up a used PC, >> installed FreeBSD 3.2-RELEASE (from the CD that was handed out at the >> June USENIX) on it, set up ipfw & natd, and it's worked fairly well. >What's ipfw? [From a system that has it....] IPFW(8) FreeBSD System Manager's Manual IPFW(8) NAME ipfw - controlling utility for IP firewall .... Essentially, it implements a fairly flexible packet filter. Someone (Luigi Rizzo, I think) recently contributed some changes to it to allow it to cache information about recently-used connections, thus allowing it to be used as a "stateful" packet filter. I have no experience with this latter, but am led to believe that such a construct can be useful in deflecting DoS attacks such as those that got so much press recently. >> And by default, FreeBSD is set to mail a status report to "root" every >> morning... and it summarizes anything that ipfw logs. So I set up ipfw >> to not only log any UDP traffic it rejects or TCP setup traffic it >> rejects, but also any externally-originating TCP setup that is >> permitted. >If you ignore failed attempts, and just take note of successful TCP >setups, will that catch everything that might have damaged you? No. I log all denied packets, regardless. (I have been known, in some cases, to drop certain packets without logging, if (for example) I have no effective means of actually controlling the source of said packets: I would much rather see log entries I can actually do something about.) I also log the first accepted packet of each TCP connection that originates from an untrusted network. This would not be quite the thing to do (probably) for a busy Web server... but then, it's certainly easy enough to make an exception for HTTP traffic, but log other successes. The idea is that there are only certain services that my home network should be making visible to the outside world. At this time, I have very little such externally-originated traffic... and doing this allows me to more easily see if there's traffic that doesn't "fit the pattern" -- and that's the key issue: recognizing when something is amiss. Further, it's a little challenging for a dropped packet to cause a problem. :-) I'm presuming that by logging the successes, I get *some* record of the origin of what might turn out to have been an attack. (Note that the firewall does its logging to an internal machine.) >Currently, I just call inetd with the - t option, and look in >/var/adm/messages for "interesting" things. Nothing showed up yet (but >then my total connected time is only about 1 hour per night). I probably >need to write a script to filter /var/adm/messages, and mail me anything >unusual, of course. Is it really appropriate to do more than that? Standard answer #0: it depends. The tracing for inetd is a form of auditing what happened. Use of ipfw has some elements of auditing (as I choose to use it), but its primary thrust is to be a filter: if ipfw drops a packet, I have a high degree of confidence that the only things that might happen as a result of that are the logging (which is something I control) and any response I choose to make via ipfw (which I also control). (ipfw can issue ICMP messages back to the (assumed) originator, with such messages as "host unreachable" or "access administratively prohibited". Although I do actually use this (sparingly), I usually merely drop offending packets on the floor & log the occurrence.) Basically, it's hard for a dropped packet (or datagram) to become part of an attack. >> For this audience, it may well be that Darren Reed's ipfilter would be a >> good fit... >URL? Hmmm... well, on my FreeBSD boxen, its source is in /usr/src/contrib/ipfilter. Ah... this looks as if it fits the bill: http://www.cyber.com.au/cyber/product/ipfilter/ Cheers, david -- David H. Wolfskill david@catwhisker.org As a computing professional, I believe it would be unethical for me to advise, recommend, or support the use (save possibly for personal amusement) of any product that is or depends on any Microsoft product. - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2000 11:19:36 -0500 From: Bennett Subject: Question on connecting dumb terminals to a Classic Sparc: To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com what is the key sequence on a dumb term to send a stop-a? Thanks! Bennett Thede holysin@iquest.net please reply to my email address as well as the suns-at-home. "The illusion of privacy is the most devious trap" Tempus mora viro nullo, materio nullo probo - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 09:48:01 PST From: "v bender" Subject: RAID To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com -- original message Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 21:31:41 -0600 From: "Buzek" Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #2 To: For Sale 5 Disk hot swappable raid array. Has 4 9 gig disks and 1 18 gig disk. Paid over 10 grand for this puppy when bought new. Letting go really cheap( wife does not like it ). Please email me directly. buzek@ev1.net Tom -- end original That's easy! Get rid of the wife, downgrade to "Girlfriend 3.0" and use the "browsing services" `/etc/init.d/browsegirlsd start` to your heart's content! ;-) Why get rid of the RAID when you can downgrade instead? O(;-) ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2000 07:24:40 -0500 From: Pat & Jake Brodersen Subject: Sparc 2 loopback test To: Sun at Home Hi all, I just set up my first Sun (@ home). It's a Sparc 2 with a Weitek upgrade. The NVRAM chip is bad. I'm waiting on a replacement at the moment. I can still get it booted up, but it fails the internal loopback test. Why is this? It also fails the test /sbus when I run it from the OK prompt. The default IP address is all hosed up when it boots, but the localhost IP 127.0.0.1 is set correctly in the .host file. Will this problem clear up when the new NVRAM is installed and set-up? Jake - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2000 12:36:30 -0500 From: "Jeffrey C. Keyser" Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #5 To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com > Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2000 18:33:16 -0800 > From: "Charles R. Hoynowski" > Subject: More Sun 3 giveaways > To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com > > I was going to toss it out, but, if anyone wants it, speak now. > Lots of Sun 3 (not sparc) stuff to go; disk packs, working 3/60, 3/110, > 3/50, scsi cables, color board for the 3/60 and whatever other Sun 3 stuff I > can dig up. At least 3 maybe 4 working systems. I'd prefer someone to take > the lot, I'm not going to custom build systems. Only price is you have to > come pick it up. > > email:charles@sparc.com I'm interested. Where are you located and what OS would run on this equipment? Are you willing to ship if I cover the shipping? Jeffrey C. Keyser - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 21:56:22 -0600 From: Garry Garrett Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #5 To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com > I might be able to obtain an old SPARC ELC workstation. The processor > is equivalent to a 486DX -50, and it has 40MB RAM (max 48MB). It has > 6GB of hard drive space, a tape backup, and a CD-ROM. Is it possible to > refurbish this box? If so, what would be a good place to send it for > refurbishing? > > -Daniel I am told that the ELC goes up to 64MB of RAM (you might need to replace some of the smaller SIMMs with larger ones to get up that high). To answer the question of "refirbishing" the box, I think I'd need a better idea of what you have in mind when you say "refirbish". ELCs were very basic. You had a monitor (Black & White - okay maybe "grayscale", I know there is a technical difference between the two terms, not that I am up on that technical difference). The motherboard is built onto the back end of the monitor. You are married to this B&W monitor. There are no SBUS slots, so it's not like you can drop in another video card and get color. Your only real method of expansion is via the one and only SCSI bus. The 6GB worth of hard disk(s) are all external SCSI devices, as are the tape backup and CDROM. If it's SCSI, you might be able to add it, as long as you have free SCSI ID's on your one and only chain (i.e. 7 devices). Scanners can be had as SCSI devices (make sure you can get Sun software for the SCSI scanner though). Zip drives can be had as SCSI devices. I don't know off the top of my head if you can drop in a Weitek CPU, but that might also be an option to "upgrade". Unfortunately, they are not terribly upgradable, which is why in companies you see them snapped up for FTP servers and such. After all, for FTP, who cares if the monitor is B&W and burned in pretty bad. So it's only 10MB ethernet; you're probably coming in over a T1 which is 1.5MB. Again, the slower SCSI bus isn't your limiting factor here. Even disk space isn't that bad. 18GB or larger disks, Solstice DiskSuite to RAID/stripe them, and you still have a sizeable FTP area. You can even get RAID boxes that present themselves as one large hard drive. They are still very useful boxes (more so than the comparable 486 IMHO), but they are useful for the more mundane tasks: FTP servers, firewalls, NFS servers, Samba servers, Web server (provided you don't have a lot of CGI-BIN stuff), e-mail server, Usenet server. I wouldn't make it do all of these tasks, but a couple of them might work. They are not, however, as upgradable as their PC counterparts. Not like anyone is making an upgrade motherboard for them or anything like that. External SCSI devices you can hook up yourself. Same for the RAM, but if you don't feel comfortable doing that, you could get a reseller to upgrade it for you (see my homepage for some links to resellers), but your local PC refirbisher might even be up to the task (not rocket science). -- Garry Garrett http://monarch.papillion.ne.us/~ggarrett - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 10:01:36 +0000 (GMT) From: Pete Hollobon Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #5 To: Dwight McKay Hi, I recently got a 3/60 going that had a broken power supply by rewiring a PC one slightly. I used the PC PSU motherboard connectors, exchanging a wire here and there to match the ones on the 3/60. It worked fine, until I left it on for more than about 15 minutes, when the keyboard (and presumably mouse) stopped working. The kb doesn't even beep when I turn the machine on any more. It's a Type 4 keyboard. Anyone got any ideas why this has happened? I'm not too keen on just replacing it in case it goes again. I'm a bit worried about using the PC PSU. IIRC, RS232 runs at 12v and the keyboard port uses RS232... is it possible my 12v supply is too large / too small and has broken the keyboard somehow? Or is a keyboard that hasn't been used for a year or two likely to just randomly stop working like this? Cheers, Pete -- // pete hollobon 01904 655877 ph116@york.ac.uk // 07808 316321 SMS (140 chars max): pete_mobile@bigfoot.com - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 02:30:38 -0500 From: "Tai" Subject: Sun Stuff for sale. To: Hi everyone, After being a member of this list for 3.5 years, I am still impressed = with the amount of knowledge that passes through here. Thanks Mr. McKay, Now here goes: Available=20 5 - SPARCstation 20 - Bare bones (M/B, case, Pwr Sup) 1 - SPARCstation 10 - Bare bones (M/B, case, Pwr Sup) 1 - SPARCstation 5 - 85 Mhz 1 - SPARCstation 2 - (needs NVRAM) 1 - SPARCstation IPC - 424 Mb H/D, 32 Mb Ram 2 - TGX FrameBuffer - #501-2922 1 - GX FrameBuffer - No part number - Says HYUNDAI on board 1 - CG6 FrameBuffer - Double Width - # 501-1645 2 - SM61? (Test system says the are running at 60Mhz) # 501-2613 2 - SM?? -( No info - they work!) # 501-4130 1 - TMS390 - (no cache) - #501-2219 1 - TMS390 - With Supercache - 501-2528 Accepting offers As a member of this group, I thought i'd offer it here first. All equipment Guarranted working. T - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 16:46:28 +0100 From: Jonathan Thornburg Subject: who makes/advertises/sells good mono monitors? To: Suns-at-Home submissions Reading the query in SAH volume 13, issue 5 about dying grayscale monitors reminds me of a question I've always wanted to ask: Suppose I want a *good* (= large, sharp) greyscale/mono monitor for a *new* computer system. Who makes/advertises/sells these critters (besides Sun itself)? The computer press and usenet newsgroups (misc.forsale.computers.monitors) all seem to focus on color monitors, but surely I'm not the only person who would rather buy other computer components for the color-greyscale/mono price difference? -- -- Jonathan Thornburg http://www.thp.univie.ac.at/~jthorn/home.html Universitaet Wien (Vienna, Austria) / Institut fuer Theoretische Physik "There's a new language called C+++. The only problem is every time you try to compile your modem disconnects." - Richard Beigel - ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************