Date: Mon, 8 Jan 90 11:19:52 EST From: Dwight D. McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V2 #1 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Mon, 8 Jan 90 Volume 3 : Issue 1 Today's Topics: Any Sun 2 SCSI users? Looking for Sun2 color gear Sun 2/120 monitors Sun 2/120 OS/memory requirements/disk expansion questions +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Submissions: suns-at-home \ @orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu | | Requests: suns-at-home-request > -- or -- | | Archives: suns-at-home-archives / ...rutgers!pur-ee!... | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Dec 89 23:55:34 GMT From: dutrun!dutetvg!pieter@relay.EU.net (Pieter Venemans) Subject: Any Sun 2 SCSI users? To: Suns-at-Home@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu >Date: Mon, 20 Nov 89 14:33:49 EST >From: Robert.Masterson@A.GP.CS.CMU.EDU >Subject: Any Sun 2 SCSI users? > >Recently I bought a 501-1045 VME bus SCSI-2 board for my Sun 2/50. The board >works fine in a Sun 3, but when I put it in the 2/50 and hook up a >Sun 3 disk and tape unit, it will not boot from the tape, giving a sense >error instead. It will not boot from the disk, either (it gives an address >error), but as the disk has 68020 binaries, this is not too surprising. I think the problem is your boot PROM. I've had the same problem with my SUN-2/50 when I tried to boot from a Wangtek tape with an Emulex MT-02 controller. Once SunOS 3.5 was running, everything worked ok, so there was nothing wrong with the 501-1045. The problem is: how do you get SunOS 3.5 on your disk when you can't boot from tape? The best solution is to get new boot PROMS, but you could try this work-around. First, format your disk on another machine and put an empty file system on it (or use the existing file system). Don't worry about the lay-out of the partitions, you can change that later. Copy the 3.5 boot program from the (68010) 3.5 distribution tape to the file '/boot'. I copied it from the tar file for the complete root file system (file #7 on tape #1). Maybe you can use the boot program in file #1 tape #1 but I haven't tried that. Now connect the shoebox to your Sun-2/50 and say: b sd(0,0,0)boot -a That boots the new boot program. The -a options forces it to ask you from where to boot. You can now boot from tape as usual and bring up SunOS 3.5. I don't know if this works for SunOS 4.0.x, but who wants 4.0.x on a 2/50 ? - Pieter H.A. Venemans - pieter@et.tudelft.nl ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Dec 89 18:59:32 EST From: lemming!cspencer@ursa-major.SPDCC.COM (Cliff Spencer) Subject: Looking for Sun2 color gear To: spdcc!orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu!suns-at-home I'm looking for a Sun2 color board and monitor. Surely with all those discarded Sun2s out there someone must want to unload one! -cliff ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Dec 89 10:23:00 -0800 From: Doug Faunt N6TQS 415-688-8269 Subject: Sun 2/120 monitors To: dmuntz@caen.engin.umich.edu They don't have different scan rates, but there are two interfaces, one TTL, and one ECL. There are at least two video cards, one of which only accepts TTL monitors, and the other of which has jumpers and can work with both. There are also at least two different cards for the monitors, same differentiation as above. There are also two differnet video cables, one of which is only good for TTL, and the other good for both. This sounds like your problem, and I could look into it further, if you want. It'd require digging a little. The "wavy" is probably a power supply problem, and no-one has come up with any schematics that I know of. good luck, doug ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Dec 89 22:28:07 EST From: Chris Siebenmann Subject: Sun 2/120 OS/memory requirements/disk expansion questions To: suns-at-home@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu Well, I have (almost) bought a Sun 2/120 as my home machine, and thus have a bevy of questions about it: 1. It's currently running SunOS 3.0. Can one still get SunOS 3.5 for Sun 2's (and if so, where)? Do I want some other SunOS revision? I definetly would like to upgrade; 3.0 seems to be missing too much (v?printf, good keyboard/display handling, etc). 2. I'm planning to use it as a multiline public access Unix machine, with me on the console plus 2-3 dialin users running rn, MH, and maybe GNU Emacs (I'll be running MGR, not SunView or X11). Is its current 2M of RAM enough? How much do I really need/want? Likewise, is 6M of swap space going to be enough? 3. Does one even want to think about running SunOS 4.0.3? How much memory does one need for to do this? 4. Of course, I want more disk space (doesn't everyone?). Right now it has two ~60M disks connected through an Adaptec SCSI<->ST506 interface plus a tape drive. What are my expansion options? - a real SCSI disk. Can anyone talk about disk types that work and how they cabled things up? Has anyone ever done this? - an Emulix MD21 (?) SCSI to ESDI converter (mentioned here before as an "approved solution"). Can one run this in addition to the Adaptec, or does one have to run it instead? Has someone done this? - A second Adaptec card. This is attractive because I can then reuse some existing ST506 disks I have lying around. How many tracks/heads can the Adaptec handle? (one of the disks I want to reuse has 15 heads, which my 3B1 needed some mods to handle)? In general, how many things can I put on the SCSI bus, and how easily? Am I better off trying to find a cheap Xylogics Multibus SMD controller? 5. Any tricks and techniques for dealing with dialin/dialout serial ports under 3.0? (I've already discovered one: "test with plugged-in and powered-on equipment lest thy carrier detect float to ON"). 6. and finally, an odd one: what is the purpose of the bottom N-pin connector on the front of the CPU board? (the top one goes to ttya and ttyb, but nothing plugs into the bottom one) In general, war stories and suchlike would be deeply appreciated; even knowing that you tried something and couldn't get it to work is a help. If there's interest, I'll send the list a summary of email I get. Thanks in advance! --- "I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world." Number Ten Ox, "Bridge of Birds" cks@white.toronto.edu ...!{utgpu,utzoo,watmath}!utcsri!white!cks ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************