"Randomize" <dgsoftnz@gmail.com> writes:

>I have recently finished repairing the NVRAM chip on an old
>SPARCstation IPC and now its time to give it an operating system. Ive
>tried installing Debian and NetBSD but was unable to get either to
>install. I would prefer to run Debian but I would be happy with NetBSD
>or some realy old version of SunOS.

>The first thing I tried to install was Debian Sparc 3.1r0 (maybe 3.0)
>from CDROM. CD Booting never got further than "freeing unused kernel
>memory: xxxk freed" (or somthing similar). I can still type on to the
>screen but there is no further output from the kernel or any other
>software.

I haven't yet found any Linux version which is painless to install on a
Sparc system. But my preference for Linux on Sparc is Gentoo at the moment
due to the better Javastation support. I gave up on Debian because it just
seems a bit too anal in the way the Debian project is run and the approach
to certain things is quite alien to what you'd expect from something that's
meant to be open-source.

>Next up I tred NetBSD - floppy booting didnt work as the second disk
>image was too big to fit on a disk. I tried Tape booting but the NetBSD
>installer could find the second part on the tape (even though I had
>followed instructions exactly). The bootable CD image wouldnt boot. I
>tred Network Booting the NetBSD installer but that didnt work.

>While I would be happy with some old version of SunOS/Solaris I dont
>know where I could get a version old enough from.

Solaris 2.6 (SunOS 5.6) and 2.7 (5.7) should be ok. I don't remember if 2.8
(SunOS 5.8) runs on IPC's but I don't think it does.

>Network booting isnt realy an option any more as I no longer have
>access to an AUI transciever. Tape booting also isnt possible as my
>SPARCstation 5, the only linux machine I have with SCSI, just stopped
>working one morning and I dont know why (Power LED comes on for half a
>second and the drives spin up - nothing more)

If you can hook up an external SCSI CD-ROM drive that would work but I think
the IPC's firmware will be too old to have a 'cdrom' alias so you would need
to do a 'probe-scsi' to get the correct device pathname, and type in the
boot path manually. There might be versions of the firmware (the later 2.x
ones if they ever got released for the Sparcstation 1+ and IPC which are
essentially the same) which know about CD-ROM drives though it's unlikely.

>External Toshiba CDROM drive (quite old, uses caddies)

But if they work, they're useful as boot devices. 8-)

I've net-installed NetBSD onto a Sparcstation 5 without a big drama - I
remember that one part of the instructions didn't make sense and it took me
a while to figure out what I did wrong but it was a few years ago now. I'm
going to attempt a fresh 2.x install onto another Sparc box soon though.

Craig.

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