I just found a SPARCstation 5, now what?

[chort]

I was taking out the trash today and I noticed a Sun box sitting by the dumpster. Seeing as I've been wanting to tinker with Solaris for a while I was immediately excited, so I brought to box back inside.

My first instinct was to connect to it with a serial cable, since I don't have a Sun monitor. I have a serial cable hooked up to my Win98 workstation, but wen I establish the connection I don't see anything on the screen. I tried hitting enter, etc but nothing happens, no prompt. Do I need a null-modem converter to switch the pins?

The other possibility is that the box is just bad, since someone was throwing it out. It does power on, but I don't know if it ever bootstraps. I'm really looking forward to playing around with it, so any help would be appreciated!

[scinerd]

Thats a pretty sweet deal. To see anything you will need to use a null modem adapter. At that point you should be able at least get to the ok prompt and maybe boot if the disk is good. The only problems with the sparc 5 is they have all custom parts so if there is something broken you will need find parts for it. Most people I know who need part look at ebay. The ultra 5 is nice since it you uses mostly stanard pc parts.

After you get to the point where you can boot it you can download solaris from sun's site for free. this the webpage for the download
http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/binaries/get.html

You will need to download the iso's and then burn then to cd. To start the install type "boot cdrom" at the ok prompt you get when you boot.

[chort]

I got the ok prompt! I just went to Fry's and bought a null serial adapter, problem #1 solved!!!

Now the problem is I can't get it to do anything from the OK prompt. I ran the network link test with it plugged into a hub and it can test the link to the hub OK. I pinged a random IP from my WinXP laptop (while plugged into the hub, and runing net-watch on the SPARC) and I could see the packets OK on the SPARC box (hooray for old hubs, gotta love unswitched networking sometimes).

Some questions to anyone familiar with SunOS:
1.) How can I tell what IP it has been assigned, from the command line?
2.) How can I tell if the OS is already installed?
3.) Any other pointers?

Oh yeah, and when I opened the CD-ROM it has a copy of Oracle 7 Server in it, which I'm assuming is already loaded. Again, I'm assuming if I do a freash install of Oracle I will need a license key, so I would prefer to not wipe out the OS so I can have a chance to use Oracle.

Man, I'm like a kid in a candy store right now. I've only read about this stuff in 2600, I never thought it would happen to me!! Hmm, Dear Penthouse...

[scinerd]

1.) How can I tell what IP it has been assigned, from the command line?

logged in as a user
/sbin/ifconfig -a
will show all interfaces. To set the ip enter the ip in the hostfile then put the hostnme in the /etc/hostname.hme0 file. the .hme0 is the interface so it might be different for the sparc.

2.) How can I tell if the OS is already installed?

at the ok prompt type
boot
or
boot disk
see if it boots. If you need to get root get the first os disk and boot of the cdrom from the ok prompt with
boot cdrom -s
this will boot single user mode and you can mount the filesystem and edit the password file. There are instrcuctions on the web for this.

3.) Any other pointers?

Sun has tons of manuals on there web site make uses of them.

I"m not sure about the Oracle stuff

[chort]

When I do boot disk it spits out:
Boot device: /iommu/sbus/espdma@5,8400000/esp@5,8800000/sd@3,0 File and args: Level 15 Interrupt
and drops me back to the OK prompt.

I'm downloading the ISOs now for Sol9, stupid me I forgot to buy more CD-Rs when I was at Fry's so now I have to run back and get them. One other thing, is there such a device as a Sun -> VGA converter? I don't have a Sun monitor and I don't want to buy one, but I do have a spare 14' VGA monitor sitting around being useless.

Thanks for all the help! This is really exciting :)

PS I know how to see the IP after I get a shell, I was wondering if there was a way from the ok prompt. Now that I think about it, if the OS hasn't loaded it won't have an IP plumbed, so that was a silly question.

[chort]

More information. After doing some Googling I found that it might be bad RAM. I did setenv selftest-#megs 16 and then test-memory. It spits out a bunch of ASCII characters, then says "no selftest method for /memory." I was expecting it to count down the amount of memory as it ran the test. Could this indicate I have bad RAM? If so, I wonder where to get SPARC architecture RAM? :(

EDIT:
Well examining the RAM theory, I powered it off (from OK prompt), pulled one stick out (it came with two), and rebooted. I got this:
ERROR : Address= 00000080, exp= 00000080, obs= 00020080, xor= 00020000

UNUMBER: U0300
SPARCstation 5, No Keyboard
ROM Rev. 2.24, 32 MB memory installed, Serial #7533331.
Ethernet address 8:0:20:72:f3:13, Host ID: 8072f313.



Testing Memory Data Access Exception

OK, obviously that isn't good, so I shut it off, pulled that stick out and put the other one in slot one... guess what? IT WORKS!!! MWAHAHHAHAHAHA.

Boot device: /iommu/sbus/espdma@5,8400000/esp@5,8800000/sd@3,0 File and args:
SunOS Release 5.5.1 Version Generic [UNIX(R) System V Release 4.0]
Copyright (c) 1983-1996, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
WARNING: clock gained 1855 days -- CHECK AND RESET THE DATE!
configuring network interfaces: le0.
Hostname: sunserver
The / file system (/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s0) is being checked.
/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s0: UNREF FILE I=51480 OWNER=bin MODE=100444
/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s0: SIZE=8829 MTIME=Apr 12 08:54 1996 (CLEARED)
/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s0: UNREF FILE I=74294 OWNER=root MODE=100555
/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s0: SIZE=143580 MTIME=Apr 12 07:41 1996 (CLEARED)
/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s0: FREE BLK COUNT(S) WRONG IN SUPERBLK (SALVAGED)
/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s0: 4922 files, 114040 used, 66575 free
/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s0: (943 frags, 8204 blocks, 0.5% fragmentation)
The /usr file system (/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s6) is being checked.
/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s6: 9992 files, 76707 used, 28476 free
/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s6: (268 frags, 3526 blocks, 0.2% fragmentation)
The system is coming up. Please wait.
checking ufs filesystems
/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s3: is stable.
/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s7: is stable.
/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s7: is stable.
starting routing daemon.
starting rpc services: rpcbind keyserv kerbd done.
Setting netmask of le0 to 255.255.255.0
Setting default interface for multicast: add net 224.0.0.0: gateway sunserver
syslog service starting.
Print services started.
volume management starting.
The system is ready.

EDIT2: Well it looks like it started in single-user mode or something, because all I had to do was type "root" at the console login and it puts me right in with no password :) My spidey senses are all tingling!!!

[scinerd]

When I do boot disk it spits out:
Boot device: /iommu/sbus/espdma@5,8400000/esp@5,8800000/sd@3,0 File and args: Level 15 Interrupt
and drops me back to the OK prompt.

this could be a number of things. there is a comand probe-scsi which will show you what devices it sees. It's been a while since I have had to do it but I think that is right. I would also open it up and make sure there is a disk and it's plugged in.

One other thing, is there such a device as a Sun -> VGA converter?
this is it:
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.asp?EDC=163801

PS I know how to see the IP after I get a shell, I was wondering if there was a way from the ok prompt. Now that I think about it, if the OS hasn't loaded it won't have an IP plumbed, so that was a silly question.

I thought it was an odd question.

as for the ram and maybe a new drive you can buy new or you can look at ebay. Just becarful sun memeory is NOT standard memory that is in a pc.

[chort]

Hey, thanks for all the help. I'm running through configuring the current init scripts so I can put it on my LAN. The local Fry's carry Sun -> VGA converters, but they're temoprarily sold-out. At least it's good to know I can get them. The Sol9 binaries are downloading and I can burn them as soon as I get more CD-Rs, so life is good.

Thanks again for the assistence!

Edit: I can't believe someone just tossed this thing out because a stick of RAM went bad. It only took me 20 minutes of Googling and two reboots to find the bad stick and remove it. Sure, I only have 32MB RAM now, but hey, it works! Now to find out about that Oracle DB... heh heh.

[xulfralos]

I don't think you'll be able to install Solaris 9 on a machine with only 32MB of RAM. Solaris 8 on x86 required 64MB of RAM when I attempted to install it on an old box a few years back. I can't imagine that they'd reduce the requirements for SPARC. Time to grep eBay for some memory sticks.

[chort]

Time to grep eBay for some memory sticks.
Bummer, I guess so! Thanks for the heads up.

Edit: Well thanks so much for all the help and advice. I got 224MB of RAM off eBay so I'm maxed at 256 now. Last night/today (damn that CD-ROM is slow) I installed Sol9 from the free binaries program.

One thing still puzzles me, and an extensive search of Google and Sun's own site didn't yield any clues: The installation process asked for documentation disks 1 & 2, and supplemental disk. There were only 4 ISOs available for download, none of which counted as the above 3 requested disks. I managed to find a "companion CD" ISO on the Sun site, but that wasn't any of the required disks either. I'm perplexed, do the documentation and supplemental CDs only come with the commercial distribution?

Any way, I'm having a bunch of fun with it.