[colug-432] SPARC hardware give/take

[Rick Troth]

On 04/03/2015 01:03 PM, Bill Schwanitz wrote:
> Depending on which of those machines I gave you there could be some
> interesting stuff. The ultra1 I know worked but had a dead eeprom battery
> so it'll boot after you type "go". the ultra 30 I think may have been dead
> but I never gave it much time/troublshooting.

Thanks, BIll, for the tips.
And please understand: deeply appreciate the machines. I blame issues
surrounding my day job for my total lack of progress.


> Both systems you can hook up a serial connection. Assuming you see gunk,
> just send a ctrl+break to the terminal and you should see the ok prompt.

Serial ... ah, DB25, ... just takes my eyes a little while to re-adjust.


> If you have the keyboard, l1+a will bring the box to the ok prompt. From
> there, boot net ( rarp not dhcp/pxe ) or boot cdrom.

I have two Sun keyboards. (one USB, the other "D" connector) The VGA
monitor I plugged in was blind (got no signal via the convertor plug I
used) so I gave up on that route (at the time). Will try again and then
will try serial if it fails.


> hope that helps.

If only for the moral support, you bet! Thanks.

Am still interested in a local SPARC HW link-up. I have this perverse
interest in creating (Linux) architecture mixes. In my own space, I have
I386, Power/PPC, S390, and ARM. Now with the router hacks (eg: flashing
OpenWRT/CeroWRT) would also help to have MIPS. And SPARC is interesting
because Oracle actually still pushes the hardware (usu w/ Solaris) ...
and I just *like* it.

Anyone got an Alpha they'd like to bring online and share?

-- R; <><