Temple Univ. haul

From: John Ruschmeyer <jruschme_at_exit109.com>
Date: Sat Oct 4 22:29:05 1997

>>
>> Regarding the Sun machine, it's a workstation-style case with a 17"
>>(or
>> 19"??) monitor attached to a base. It has an Ethernet port, 2 serial ports,
>> and a SCSI port. The monitor has a DB9 connection, and the keyboard is a
>>DB15.
>> Unfortunately, there was no keyboard/mouse and no monitor cable. Can anyone
>> help me out with these parts?
>>
>
>You actually don't NEED a keyboard and mouse. You can hook up a dumb
>terminal (or computer running a com program) on Serial port A and it'll
>default to using that port as console. You may or may not need to take
>out the graphics adapter (or is it built-in on the 3/50? I can't
>remember). The port runs at 9600 baud, with 7E1 prefered over 8N1, but I
>think both work.

The graphics adapter is built in, but the serial terminal should work.

As I recall, the original poster is also missing the monitor cable.
IIRC, the cable is just a DB9M-to DB9M, straight through.

>OSes that'll run on the machine at NetBSD, SunOS, Linux(?) and
>older versions of Solaris(?). Although the Sun3 version of Linux is still
>somewhat alpha and Solaris would be a nightmare (imagine Win95 on a
>386SX-16). NetBSD'd probably be the choice.

The only version of Solaris which might have run on a Sun 3 would be 1.0.
The last version of SunOS to run on a Sun 3 was 4.1.1_U1.

A couple of things to remember here, you've got a fairly slow 68020 system
(20 mhz?) with 4MB of RAM. The only memory upgrades were *real* expensive
and real obscure.

OS-wise, your best bets would either be to find a copy of SunOS or to run
either NetBSD or OpenBSD.

As for hooking up a hrd disk, you could always run it diskless and netboot
from another Unix box.

FYI, the preferred use for 3.50's these days is to run them as X terminals
using a stripped down kernel.

>For more info on the machine, search for the "sun hardware faq", and you
>might look into the "suns at home" mailing list.

Try http://www.net-kitchen.com/~sah

<<<John>>>
Received on Sat Oct 04 1997 - 22:29:05 BST

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