On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 10:54:19 -0400, Donn Miller wrote:

> I just bought a Seagate Barracuda, 18.2 GB, from ebay for $9.50. My big
> fear there is that it won't work in the Ultra-2. I did buy a 9.1GB
> Seagate Barracuda, model ST39173WC from ebay previously, but my U2
> wouldn't recognize it. Turns out I had to set a jumper "force
> single-ended", but the WC models lack such a jumper. I'm hoping this
> Barracuda I just bought will work. But this time I learned my lesson,
> and looked for a Seagate drive that had a jumper where one could force
> single-ended mode only. In fact, it was billed as a Single-Ended drive
> by the seller. Including shipping, the total came to $18.75. Not bad
> at all, I'd say, provided this drive works. But then, eBay can be risky.

You can readily check the specs for Seagate drives using Google. Input
the model number and site:seagate.com. Select the second (usually) hit.

I'm using Ultra-1 machines but the U-2's use the same drive controller.
In this machine I have:

ST39103LCSUN9.0G and ST34371W SUN4.2G.

The drives I recently bought are ST318203LC and do not have the SUN
firmware but work perfectly. Unless you really need the drive space the
ST39103LC or ST39102LC drives are your best choice since they dissipate
less power than most drives and spin at 10k rpm.

The system handbook at sunsolve.sun.com does provide you with a list of
known_to_work drives.

> Well, my Ultra-2 came with two framebuffers: two nearly identical
> cgsix/turbogx. As I soon found out, they were 8-bit, although supported
> by NetBSD. However, I'm afraid 8-bit just won't do. For a pure server,
> well, I can see. I don't see the point in having two 8-bit
> framebuffers. Oh wow, a dual-headed 256-color setup.

In 1985 I thought a 4-bit color depth was pretty neat :-)

Even if your new drive doesn't work properly you can still get Solaris
installed on that 2.1GB drive. Just leave out some of the stuff you don't
need. Select the Developer's package cluster then deselect the unwanted
packages.

If you really want a BSD then use OpenBSD since it has support for the
Creator 3D framebuffer. It's just a little bit of hassle to install and
then configure X. If you don't need the full network bandwidth OpenBSD's
hme driver is adequate.