Re: sun4c (Was /etc/disktab on vax)

["..I'd rather be coding ASM!" <uridium%deviate.fi@localhost>]

> I haven't tried a netboot yet, that was going to be my next option.  The tape 
> drive that I have is dead so there's no tape boot option for me right now.

*nod* Ok. keep an eye on the capstans and the rubber wheel. I've seen a 
number of drives dug out of retirement by enthusiests that've beed fed 
their first tape and have had the rubber wheel spoodge all over the tape 
as it self-destructs in much the same way the rubber feet on old sun's 
enjoy. Check carefully if you do get the urge.

> I've not found any documentation for performing a PROM update.  If you've got 
> a link, I'd be glad to look.

It's pretty simple. Grab the prom update from a TME emulator site, eg:
http://people.csail.mit.edu/fredette/tme/sun4-75-nbsd.html

Grab an empty EPROM or one of the new FLASHPROM equivs like the AM29Fxxx's 
(there's lovely .. plenty of chances to mess up and experiment without 
having to worry about 1hr retry-delays as you erase under the UV lamp, 
just blank it and retry), feed it the .bin image via a cheap willem 
programmer. It's what I've done. I'm running v2.9 in my Fujitsu IPX.

> As for disks I'm ok for now.  Both IPXes have 1GB installed disks and I have 
> a few JBOD quad-pack boxes that are populated.

I like it. I've got a number of BA350's in service that are similar to 
the old sun quad-disk lunchbox wannabe's. Recently, I've upgraded some
systems to an "SSD" (Still amuses me to call it such for giggles) is one of 
these:
http://www.artmix.com/pdffiles/CF_AZTECMONSTER_MN_E_13.pdf

I got them off fleabay for a fair bit of money. I've got two and frankly 
want to in the coming months get some more. I have nothing but the highest 
praise for what this Japanese chap has created. I have one attached to my 
Amiga 500+ off the GVP Impact-II disk controller. Some max multiple 
settings need to be set as it "will" try and do faster modes and the GVP 
gets it's knickers in a twist without it being set to 64kb transfer 
blocks. I have a second in the BA350 I'm feeding the VAX4000-m90 on the 
dining table (Yeah, I'm staying single it seems), and the third in the 
IPX. These things are darn quick, highly reliable. I just needed to take 
the whole "it's not spinning media, it has limited number of write cycles 
to it, so put your swap partition/slices and volitile dirs elswhere". So, 
in addition to a scsi disk, I use one of these. System speed/response time 
is exceptionally sped up.

They were afair originally intended for the m68k mac liberationists, but 
work flawlessly in a lot of systems. Expensive, but really really just 
works.

Al.

--
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 Al Boyanich
 adb -w -P "world> " -k /dev/meta/galaxy/ksyms /dev/god/brain