Sun Ultra 1 questions

From: Scott Stevens <sastevens_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Tue May 18 18:43:35 2004

On Mon, 17 May 2004 10:17:11 +0000
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>
> See my other post about the Ultra 1 I found. (I think it's a couple of
> years too new to be on-topic - sorry!)
>
> I put the pair of memory sticks in there which I got in the same day
> and tried powering the machine up using a terminal as the console.
> Amazingly, it's alive!
>
> At the moment it's set to boot from the network - any idea how I can
> interrupt that and get into the boot monitor in order to switch that
> off? I think there's some key combination to do it from a keyboard,
> but of course I don't have one handy at the moment - just the console.
>
> There's a clear perspex bracket above the CPU for holding a fan, but
> no fan. As this machine had been stripped before I got it, I don't
> know if it should have one and someone had taken it out. The CPU has a
> large finned heatsink on it - on the web I saw a vague report that Sun
> may have stopped putting fans in the machines on later ones and just
> used a larger heatsink. Any ideas?
>
> Finally, any clue as to whether the Apple SCSI CDROM I got will work
> in the Ultra? It's a 1993 vintage drive, an "AppleCD 300 Plus". If
> not, I do have a SCSI drive that'll do both 512 and 2048 block sizes,
> but it's in a running machine at the moment...
>

I have had good luck booting Ultra 1 boxes with that exact CD-ROM drive.
 Last summer I had a group of three Ultra 1 boxed I'd gotten at auction
that had no CD Drives, and a pile of PowerMac 7200s with that drive in
them. It was a no-brainer to scrap the Macs and put a CD in the Sun
boxes. I've booted Solaris and NetBSD with those drives, using 'boot
cdrom' from the OB prompt.

I have heaps of those Apple drives, if anybody ones one or a few for the
cost of shipping just write.

As to why the Ultra 1 was 'thrown out': there seem to be a scad of U1
boxes being surplused these days. Mine I got at auction for $12.50
each, and possibly would have gotten them cheaper, but didn't want to
play 'chicken' with the auctioneers, who sometimes have a tendency if
they think you're 'camping' to end the 'select item from the pile'
bidding and sell the whole lot, sadly too often to a PC-only drone who
ends up pitching or scrapping anything that won't run Windoze.
Received on Tue May 18 2004 - 18:43:35 BST