Solaris Boot Strap question

[rsbriggs]

Question for those Solaris gurus out there. I just bought a couple more Ultra Sparc 10's to play with, only these came without hard drives.

1.) These appear to be standard IDE drives. Are they?

2.) If so, does that mean I can pop a small IDE drive in the box, use OpenBoot to boot off the installation CD, and format/partition/install from the CD?

:confused:

[PCZ]

Yes

Set the drive jumpers to Cable Select.
You should be fine with any IDE drive as long as its not over 120gb.

Stop A
boot cdrom

[rsbriggs]

The 120 Gb limit won't be a problem - I just bought a batch of 6x 6.3Gb drives for $4.00 each, so I have lots of little drives now :) (It'll be a bargain if even 1/2 of them work...) Thanks for the info!

Ummm. Another question on the Ultra-10's.... Will a stock monitor work as the console? There is a VGA connector, in addition to the Sun video, but I don't know if there is some sort of configuration necessary, or if video will just "show up" on that connector. I can pick up a Sun monitor for about $30 - is it even necessary or worth doing?

Grrr. I hate the three button Sun mice.....


Originally posted by PCZ
Yes

Set the drive jumpers to Cable Select.
You should be fine with any IDE drive as long as its not over 120gb.

Stop A
boot cdrom

[PCZ]

You should be fine with any VGA monitor.
I use PC monitors with ultra 10's.

You will only have problems if you have the enhanced creator series video cards
they have the old Sun video connector and you would need an adaptor.

The onboard video can be used with a PC monitor.

[Bok]

As an aside, you can often get a pretty decent monitor with an Ultra 10 on Ebay. When I bought one some years ago, I got a Sun 21" monitor virtually for free. I still use that today at work on my linux workstation..

Bok

[rsbriggs]

The university here has a surplus property distribution center, where they get rid of "old junk". Last time I was over there, I noticed a couple of the 21" SUN monitors for $30. Guess I could buy a SUN to VGA adapter if I wanted to use them on a PC...

Hmmm... How does $50 sound for a old SUN Enterprise 2 ??? They have 1/2 dozen ultra-5 boxes for $10, too

[Bok]

The one I got was a VGA, I'd check as I'd bet they are standard connections and $30 would be a bargain. They are heavy though. Mine weighs in at about 90lbs :)

I wouldn't pay $50 for an E2 and $10 for the Ultra 5 (I have one also) depends on what they come with I guess, might get a decent HD possibly. It's probably only a 166/233Mhz proc in the ultra 5

Bok

[IronBits]

They have fixed resolutions. You need to make sure the video card will display what the monitor can handle, like 60Hz (headache)

[PCZ]

I have to disagree there IB.

I use Sun monitors on my PC's, picked up a couple of 21inch monitors with some old Sparcs.

They have 2 video inputs.
A captive lead with a SUN plug on the end which usually comes with an adaptor for 15pin vga.

A 15 pin socket for input 2, which takes a standard vga lead.

I have used them from vga up to 1600 x 1200 and refresh rates up to 100hz.
They might go even higher than that.

The tube is a trinitron, on white backgrounds you can see the 2 fine wires.

I just ran through some different resolutions to see what refresh rates they can work at.


800 x 600 140hz
1024 x 768 100hz
1280 x 1024 85hz
1600 x 1200 75hz

[IronBits]

That's good to know. :thumbs: