Date: Sat, 27 Apr 96 07:28:12 EST From: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V9 #15 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Sat, 27 Apr 96 Volume 9 : Issue 15 Today's Topics: Configuration of Sun386i/250 No Subject QuickDraw printer from Solaris 2.4 SCSI ID questions Suns-at-Home Digest V9 #14 (2 msgs) Using PPP at home Value of Sparcs VME cards for high speed serial ports. +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | 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: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 13:09:39 EDT From: KOZLOFFA@woods.uml.edu Subject: Configuration of Sun386i/250 To: SUNS-AT-HOME@tigger.net-kitchen.com Hello. I have inherited a Sun386i/250 running SunOs 4.0.2. It recently had been working fine on an ethernet, and recently stopped working after I powered it down and restarted it. I believe that the battery for the NVRAM is dead, and that the system does not know where to look for its ethernet port. Even when I ping the machine when it is disconnected from the network, I get the message: "network is down". During the boot sequence, when the machine executes the ifconfig lines in the rc.local file, a message comes up: "ie0: init failed: no intr". My question is, where can I find a listing of the contents that are supposed to go to the NVRAM so I can put them in at the monitor prompt? How do I put them in? Any input would be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Anthony Kozloff kozloffa@woods.uml.edu - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 11:33:02 -0500 From: Marianne Takamiya Subject: No Subject To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Hi there! I just got a new Sparc5 which I will be setting up myself (if I manage!). I would like to know if you know where I can find basic information on how to set it up. So far, I have unpacked it all, and tried to install the internal CD-ROM in order to boot the system. However, I have had a hard time finding the appropiate information on how to install the CD-ROM (which cables go where) and on what the basic steps are to boot the system and configure it. I would appreciate if you could tell me where I can find information. Thank you very much, Marianne - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Apr 1996 13:15:10 -0400 From: wkearney@access.digex.net (Bill Kearney) Subject: QuickDraw printer from Solaris 2.4 To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com > Date: Sun, 7 Apr 96 10:45 BST-1 > From: jcl@cix.compulink.co.uk (Mr J C Laughton) > Subject: QuickDraw printer from Solaris 2.4 > To: Suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com > > Is it possible to drive an Apple QuickDraw Inkjet printer from > Solaris 2.4? There don't seem to be any termcap entries for non-Po > tscript inkjet printers in general. Just basic text printing in a > linited range of fonts would be OK. Any suggestions? I'm not aware of any such records. Keep in mind, however, you could have the Display Postscript software render it into a bitmap and send that to the printer. You'd get real PostScript in the process. I, of course, have no real tips on accomplishing this feat. But it's similar in principal to how faxing get's done. The output is converted from text (or whatever) into Postscript and then rendered into TIFF. This is, in turn, sent out via the faxmodem. I suspect something similar could be done for any printer. Bill - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Apr 96 02:20:43 PDT From: perryh@pluto.rain.com (Perry Hutchison) Subject: SCSI ID questions To: kritsilas@plntree.synapse.net > Date: Mon, 08 Apr 96 14:33:59 > From: kritsilas@plntree.synapse.net > I have just about gotten my Sun 3/60 in a usable form ... I > would like to add a second, and maybe even third drive. What > SCSI ID should the second and third drives be put at? For a 3/60 with default kernel configuration, the disks are ID's 0, 1, 2, 3 in that order. The resulting names are sd0, sd2, sd4, sd6. The odd numbers would be assigned to the second drive on each controller, a situation which only arises when using MFM or ESDI drives via bridge controllers. ... > the INSTALLBOOT program is used to make any formatted drive bootable. > I can't seem to find that program in any of the system directories. Is > this because the program is not in my version of SunOS (4.1)? The manpage should tell where it is. On my 3.5 system, it is a shell script in /usr/mdec: : installboot.sh 1.2 86/10/08 : Usage: installboot bootfile disk dd if=$1 of=$2 bs=1b count=15 seek=1 conv=sync sync - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996 11:01:06 -0500 (CDT) From: Robert Bonomi Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V9 #14 To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com + Date: Mon, 08 Apr 96 14:33:59 + From: kritsilas@plntree.synapse.net + Subject: SCSI ID questions + To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com + + 1. The only drive on the system right now is a 100MB HP sd(0,0,0). I + would like to add a second, and maybe even third drive. What SCSI ID + should the second and third drives be put at? Drives are recognized in the 'generic' kernel at SCSI ID 0, 1, 2, and 3. aka. sd (0,0,), sd(0,8,), sd(0,10,) and sd(0,18,), respectively. Of course, you can build a 'custom' kernel with as many, or as -few-, drives supported as you want, on whatever ID's you want. If in doubt, see the CONFIG file for the kernel you're running. + + 2. I have no manuals for the system. I have however, picked up a third + party Unix administratioin book. In that book, the authors write that + the INSTALLBOOT program is used to make any formatted drive bootable. + I can't seem to find that program in any of the system directories. Is + this because the program is not in my version of SunOS (4.1)? it's *HIDDEN*. /usr/kvm/mdec/installboot. + Date: Mon, 08 Apr 1996 16:36:59 +0100 + From: Kevan + Subject: VME cards for high speed serial ports. + To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com + + I have an old 4/110 and would love to find a VME card that has high speed + serial ports on it to fit into the spare slot my machine has. I would then + be able to use my 28K8 modem at more than the 38K4 of the built in serial + ports. Were these things ever produced for 4/110's? If so where would I get + second hand ones these days? Stock _SunOS_ doesn't support a standard async port speed higher than 38.4K, on either 'on-board' ports, or ALM/MCP ports. The Zilog UART that Sun uses can handle -only- two higher speeds -- 51.2K, and 76.8K. *IF* you have a modem that can speak one of these speeds, you _can_ patch the O/S so you can use them. An alternative is a Sun HSI board. but it has RS-449 and V.35 ports. only. finding a 'compatible' modem would be _difficult_ :( - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996 19:00:40 +0200 (MET DST) From: Wilko Bulte Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V9 #14 To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com > Date: Mon, 08 Apr 1996 16:36:59 +0100 > From: Kevan > Subject: VME cards for high speed serial ports. > To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com > > I have an old 4/110 and would love to find a VME card that has high speed > serial ports on it to fit into the spare slot my machine has. I would then > be able to use my 28K8 modem at more than the 38K4 of the built in serial > ports. Were these things ever produced for 4/110's? If so where would I get > second hand ones these days? I do have two Sun MCP VME cards lying around. I'm not sure this is what you are looking for, maybe someone on this list can comment? Wilko - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 13:16:05 -0400 From: nate@world.std.com (nate harel) Subject: Using PPP at home To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Hi. This is my first time submitting something so forgive me if this topic has been covered. I am running a SS1 at home Sol 2.3. I have Sun's PPP at my office and wanted to know how to set this up to get maximum benefit in terms of speed. I have a 115.2KB modem but my Sun is only capable of running at 38.4K off its serial port. My question is: does it make sense to spend the money to get a higher speed serial port to go from 38.4K to 115.2K when my modem's max speed at the phoen end is 28.8K. In other words, is there a real performance difference between the 38.4 and the 115.2? Thank you for your help/suggestions. Nate - ------------------------------ Date: 17 Apr 96 12:07:16 EDT From: Robin Dunscombe/STA/Lotus Subject: Value of Sparcs To: "Dwight McKay (The Moderator)" Hi, I have a couple of SPARC 1s and a couple of SPARC 1+ for sale and I don't know what they are worth. They've got 16Mb RAM, 207Mb hard disk and mono 17" monitors. Anybody got any ideas ? Rgds, Robin - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Apr 1996 19:45:05 +0200 (MET DST) From: Toerless Eckert Subject: VME cards for high speed serial ports. To: kevan@redted.demon.co.uk > I have an old 4/110 and would love to find a VME card that has high speed > serial ports on it to fit into the spare slot my machine has. I would then > be able to use my 28K8 modem at more than the 38K4 of the built in serial > ports. Were these things ever produced for 4/110's? If so where would I get > second hand ones these days? No good idea. The basic problem with the 4/110 is that it supports slave-mode VME boards only because it's the first sparc workstation from sun with VMEbus and they didn't had enough board space for bus-master support. I guess most serial interface boards on VMEbus need the bus-master service, like the ALM-1 from sun (which of course cannot go faster than 19.200 on all 16 ports anyway). The only serial interface board that i am aware of, which does not need the bus master ability is suns ALM-2/MCP board. This is a really neat one, because it utilizes 8 85C30 serial I/O chips which run on a common 64 KByte dual ported shared memory into the VME bus. The board supports 16 serial interfaces (with four of those having the full range of modem control, the other 12 only for terminals), and a parallel port. If you buy the MCP variant, you get a different connector plate which gives you access to the first four serial ports only, but now at synchronuous speeds of up to 512 Kbps aggregate. The problem with the ALM2/MCP is that suns asynchronuous driver supports only speeds of up to 19.200 like it does for the internal serial ports, which use the same I/O hardware. The solution to this problem is to patch the kernel variable "mcp_speeds" (which is used to define the speeds on the ALM-2/MCP board), like it can be done for the internal serial ports with the "zs_speeds" variable. I guess that an explanation on how to do this is available on some sun-archiv. As for the hardware, i guess that there is no problem driving the first four serial interfaces of the MCP to asynchronuous speeds of up to 115 Kbps (just guessing). With the internal serial ports of all suns, the speed is naturally limited to 57.6 Kbps because the line drivers will not deliver usable signal levels at higher speeds (verified with an osziloscope on an SS10). As the MCP line drivers are built to sustain up to 512 Kbps at synchronuous operations, i guess that they should do fine at asynchronuous operations with up to 115 kbps. For this reason it is probably better to get the MCP variant, because it might well be that the ALM2 variant uses different line drivers for the first four ports too. When using the MCP/ALM-2, the interrupts really go down. I have used SLIP over my MCP and the interrupts were constantly at <= 100, because the driver switches from interrupt driven operations to polled operations when the interrupts get too high, i.e.: it polls the 64 KByte RAM buffer 100 times a second or the like (i havn't tried to analyze the driver in detail). Oh well, a last remark: the ALM-2 has a parallel port too, and the MCP can be made to have one with an additional cable. Hope that helps Toerless - ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************