Sun SPARCstation 10 Pizza Box Rebuild...

cparker15 · 08-27-2003, 08:33 AM

Hi all,

I had a SPARCstation 2 Pizza Box donated to me a couple of weeks ago. I eventually want to put the latest Debian GNU/Linux distribution on the machine. There's one slight problem, though... There's no hard drive. I know absolutely nothing about Sun hardware. Does the SPARCstation 2 have an IDE interface? Do I need to purchase a SCSI drive?

As far as I can tell, it's just missing a hard drive. I would like to put a large hard drive in this thing. Are there any size limitations I need to worry about?

For your information, I plan on using this as my PDC for centralized SMB/Samba sharing and as an internal DNS for hostname resolving to the rest of the nodes on my network.

Thank you much! ^.^

cparker15 · 08-27-2003, 03:42 PM

Hmm... I guess I answered one of my own questions... I did some searching, and came to this page:

http://www.netside.net/SS10.html

The URL above is a copy of Sun's marketing material for the SPARCstation 10. According to it, it has two SCSI interfaces. It doesn't mention a thing about IDE.

Does anyone know what hard drive size limitations I am going to be faced with? Also... hmm.... I heard SCSI hard drives are more expensive than IDE hard drives of comparable performance. Is this true?

cparker15 · 08-27-2003, 08:13 PM

Hah... nevermind.

I got home and looked at the system, and discovered it's actually a SPARCstation 2 (not SPARCstation 10--I changed the title and the references in the first post).

I can tell already that it's missing a hard drive and a power supply. It looks like there may be room for something else in the box, but I can't tell what it would be. There are square holes on the bottom of the empty space, and there's a grated vent, too. It looks like something slides into the square holes.

I looked around the back, and I don't see any way to connect to any other computers. No RJ11 ports, no RJ45 ports. How am I to use this for a server computer on my network?

It looks like this has a SCSI connector on the motherboard and two IDE connectors on the motherboard. It also looks like it has a LOT of RAM: 16 chips!

As I've mentioned, I'm not familiar with this kind of hardware... there are two items that look like add-on cards, only they're not cards, per-se. One of them says "SunGX" and it has an odd-looking connector on the back--one large circle, ten smaller circles in two rows, and then two large circles next to each other. I've never seen a connector like this before.

It also looks like it has an external SCSI connector for a scanner or something, a VGA connector, two parallel port connectors (labeled A and B), and two PS/2 connectors.

Thanks again for reading!

P.S.

I downloaded the sun4cdm images for Debian's Rescue Disk (rescue.bin) and Driver Disk (driver-1.bin). This is all well and good, but without some sort of network connection, they're pretty much useless

cparker15 · 08-28-2003, 08:19 AM

It seems like I may have found someone that could help me.

http://www.obsolyte.com/sun_ss2/

This guy appears to be a guru when it comes to this kind of hardware. I'm going to try contacting him to see what it is I need to do to get my SPARCstation up and running.

cparker15 · 08-28-2003, 03:12 PM

I was searching Google, and found this: http://www.memoryx.net/spar2com.html

They sell all sorts of SPARCstation 2 components, including the replacement power supply I'm going to need. It's currently $17 USD, which I'm more than willing to pay. The SCSI hard drives seem a tad pricy. I think I'll shop around some more.

cparker15 · 08-28-2003, 03:15 PM

I also just found a thread on GeoCrawler. Sure enough, the individual had all the same questions I have.

http://www.geocrawler.com/mail/threa...tion+2&list=71

One of his questions was converting from AUI to 10BaseT. Apparently, I can buy a transciever for cheap money to get my Sparc 2 on my network.

If anyone else out there is looking for information like this, I suggest you read on by clicking the link above.

cparker15 · 08-29-2003, 11:43 AM

I found an AUI transceiver from StarTech.com. I found a couple of sellers' Web sites by searching google... One of them was selling this transceiver for $21.00 USD. StarTech.com sells it for $14.00 USD.

http://www.startech.com/ststore/item...ar=topbara.htm

StarTech.com's AUI drop cables have been discontinued. It looks like I'll have to go elsewhere for these.

cparker15 · 08-29-2003, 11:59 AM

I contacted the guy from ObsolYte, and he replied to me rather promptly. Below is my message, followed by his reply:

Quote:

Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 07:54:31 -0700 (PDT)
From: Christopher Parker
Subject: SPARCstation 2 Rebuild...
To: Brian Cirulnick

Hi,

I was browsing the web today, and found your site while searching for "sun sparcstation 2" on
google. I must say, your site is very informative.

I have a slight problem. I am putting together a home network, and I would like to have a DNS for
automagic name resolution and a PDC for centralized SMB sharing. Someone donated a Sun
SPARCstation 2 to me for this purpose. I plan on putting the latest Debian release on this thing,
and would like to use a large hard drive.

The only thing is that it's not a complete system. It's missing a hard drive, a power supply, and
I don't know *what* else. Instead of junking it, I'd like to take on the project of refurbishing
this machine and get it up and running.

First off, I'm not quite sure the hardware that IS in there is functional. I don't really know how
I would test it, either.

Secondly, I have no clue where to get any replacement hardware for this thing. Should I try eBay?

Additionally, your page on the SPARCstation 2 was helpful, but I'm afraid I am still a little
lost. I currently have LAN comprised of Cat-5e cable and RJ45 connectors. What am I to do to get
this SPARCstation 2 on my existing network?

For your information, I have all x86-based machines at my house, with FreeBSD 5.1, Red Hat,
Debian, and MS Windows XP and ME at my disposal. Other *NIX distributions may be acquired as
needed. I've already downloaded the sun4mdc floppy images from debian.org. I'd like to perform a
net install on this thing.

I originally posted about this issue on LinuxQuestions.org. Would you mind if I posted a copy of
this message and our interactions (if any) about my situation on the forums at LQ?

You may find my original message here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...?postid=448396

Thank you for your time. It's very appreciated.

=====
Christopher Parker <cparker@member.fsf.org>

Don't ignore spam. Protect your rights and report it by forwarding your spam mail (with full
headers) to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission <uce@ftc.gov>.

Quote:

From: Brian Cirulnick
To: Christopher Parker
Subject: RE: SPARCstation 2 Rebuild...
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 13:45:48 -0400

#1) Feel free to post anything I say to any archive you like. Hell, if you
ever do a google search for my name, all you'll find is messages I've
written! Very scary indeed.

#2) Ebay, or college campus garbage sales would be the best place to find
SS2 parts, although if you're missing the power supply, you might be better
off dumping the whole thing and just finding a cheap SS2 complete someplace
for about $10 -- even better if you live in an area that occasionally has
computer junk shows/hamfests/flea markets or something similar.

#3) The best way to install any variant of Linux or BSD is probably to
obtain a SCSI cdrom drive and attempt to boot from CDROM. This can usually
be done from the PROM prompt by typing "b cdrom", but make sure the CD is
set to scsi ID 6. make sure the ISO of whatever distribution you've gotten
is bootable, and it is the SPARC-based version, not the Intel version.

#4) Connecting the SS2 (or any machine with an AUI port) to a cat-5 based,
RJ-45 connected network is easy, you just need an AUI to 10-bt transceiver.
It's a little grey box with 3 or 4 LEDs and 15pin on one end, rj-45 on the
other and it usually looks like this:
http://www.addtron.com/products/et10t1b.htm

They are a pretty common sight around older machines that remain connected
to newer networks.

Good luck! Without a power supply, you've certainly got your work cut out
for you. Remember that this is is NOT like a PC, because for starters even
before you put an OS on it, you can check out the machine and perform
diagnostics by powering it on and connecting to serial port a at 8,n,1, 9600
baud into a terminal and poking around through the PROM (See:
http://www.obsolyte.com/sunFAQ/serial/ ). That can tell you right away if
the machine is worth saving or not, as many have lost their battery-backed
settings and would need to have their NVRAM replaced (and reprogrammed). See
for more detail on that here:
http://www.obsolyte.com/sunFAQ/faq_nvram.html

I hope this helps!
Brian Cirulnick
--------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail: techrat@obsolyte.com
URL: http://www.obsolyte.com -- where the antique is elYte!!
http://www.anime.com -- the one stop shop for all things anime

cparker15 · 09-03-2003, 07:45 AM

I subscribed to the sparclinux list at http://vger.kernel.org/ to get a second opinion on my situation I've been describing here. I directed the folks on the list to the thread here on LinuxQuestions.

The thread I started on the sparclinux list can be found at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linu...9100024192&w=2 . It appears Geocrawler hasn't updated its archives in about two months (as of 03 September, 2003), so my post isn't showing up there yet.

Thanks.