Help installing on and old SPARC 5

[graziano <graziano@ucsd.edu>]

I'm trying to install debian on an old sparc 5. The HD is in need of at 
least reformatting, perhaps is to trash, and the machine doesn't have an 
internal floppy or CDROM. I burnt my own CD and hooked up an external 
CD-W (SCSI) and tried to boot from there.

I get to the boot prompt. I tried the "s" option (for SCSI cdrom) and 
the kernel boot, but it cannot mount the root filesystem.

I'm fairly experienced with x86 debian installation, but this is my 
first sparc. Any suggestion on what to do?

thanks
graziano

PS I'm not on the mailing list (yet). Please answer ccing me.