Re: Deb on Sparc Station 5
Hartwig Atrops wrote:
>
> Hi John.
>
> On Saturday 06 August 2005 23:26, you wrote:
> > On Saturday 06 Aug 2005 08:55, Hartwig Atrops wrote:
>
> ...
> > The ss5's don't come with a floppy or CD drive, but I do have a SCSI CD
> > burner attached to one of my amd boxes. How do I get round the openboot
> > password to tell it to boot from the CD?
>
> External SCSI CD? You can attach it to the SS5. Openboot password? Are you
> shure? I have never seen a machine with an openboot password (I think there
> is an option to have a password - cannot check at the moment). Usually you
> will get the openboot prompt. Type in "boot cdrom" - it will boot from CD
> (drive needs to be jumperd as SCSI ID 6).
Otherwise easy to boot over LAN (needs rarpd and tftpd), although I've not tried
a complete installation like that (needs NFS?).
Writing as another tyro, I've seen at least one SPARCserver with a password. I
believe that Doctrine is to perform some 'orrible hack which involves plugging
the NVRAM device with power applied, but it's /far/ easier to find somebody with
a device programmer and copy a clean one.
> > I have got 15 more of these plus a mass storage server coming. The monitors
> > are 17" and very good quality. Any one know where I can get a gender bender
> > that allows me to use some of them on IBM compatible VGA video cards?
>
> The old Sun monitors are fixed frequency monitors. Bad luck, I would say.
As I understand it the monitors expect a composite sync on the green signal
rather than it being split out PC-style, although in some cases there are
hardware mods which will make them work. Looked at the other way- i.e. using a
PC monitor on a Sun- I've had mixed results using an adapter: some work
intermittently, others not at all. To my surprise an NEC MultiSync LCD1860NX
works fine on SPARCserver/SPARCstation, other LCDs may also be worth trying.
Another thing to take into account is that if run without a keyboard Suns tend
to use the first serial port as their TTY. You might need to tie RxD with a
resistor to prevent a break on this since otherwise it has the same effect as
STOP-A.
Running older machines is great as a learning exercise, but they tend to run
warm. I'm currently going through power consumption as a housekeeping exercise
and find that a SPARCstation 20 takes something like 135W at the login prompt,
compared with 35W on a PC. I can't provide comparable figures for an Ultra,
however in general BogoMIPS per Watt has improved dramatically over the last few
years and probably that also applies to overall system throughput.
--
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk
[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]
Reply to: