Re: db9 requirements

[Eric Christopherson via cctalk]

On Jul 5, 2017 7:20 PM, "Henry Bond via cctalk" 
wrote:

Good Evening all, hope your week is going well.

I received a sparcstation 10 today and wondered if anyone knew which db25
cable to get to connect to my DEC vt, null modem, cross over, etc, etc.


I'm also wondering about connecting a SS20 (which should be about the same)
with a PC. I foldout ordered a regular cable instead of a null modem one,
so I assume I'll need to get a null modem; but I'd be happy to be told
otherwise.


Also if anyone has experience with this machine I would be happy to take OS
recommendations.


I wanted to play with SunOS, not NetBSD, so if was suggested that I go with
version 4.1.4. I got the impression later versions don't run that well, and
if you care about SVR4 vs. BSD, the mostly pure BSD line ended at 4.1.4.

Re: db9 requirements

[David Brownlee via cctalk]

On 6 July 2017 at 23:39, Henry Bond  wrote:



> [image of back of sparc]
> I believe I have a graphics output device, preliminary ebay searches find
> the sun video to vga-dsub hard to come by, at least for the UK. Maybe an
> original monitor? Happy to take suggestions :)
>

Ahh yes. I'm going to guess cg3 (basic 8 bit framebuffer) from that angle :)

Looks like Sun 13W3 to VGA adaptors are around £20 inc shipping from the
states, though obviously suns are very nice on serial console if you don't
have the space for random monitors.


> Also hard drives appear to be a rare commedity that have the appropriate
> connections and are internal and in a functional state.
>

Wow, they really have gone up (just looked at eBay). Other options include
a 50pin to modern SCSI adaptor or even something like
http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=SCSI2SD

Of course Sun's work really well netbooted if you have some other random
box to provide rarp, dhcp & nfs (add in bootparams for older OSs). A very
long time ago I was running a public access cluster and happened to be on a
different continent for a couple of years. Some of the suns had rather
dodgy disks which would crap out and need a reformat to get back. It was
quite nice to be able to netboot, then run a script to reformat, install
and reboot back into service from nine timezones away :)

David

Re: db9 requirements

[David Brownlee via cctalk]

On 6 July 2017 at 01:19, Henry Bond via cctalk  wrote:
> Good Evening all, hope your week is going well.
>
> I received a sparcstation 10 today and wondered if anyone knew which db25
> cable to get to connect to my DEC vt, null modem, cross over, etc, etc.
>
> Also if anyone has experience with this machine I would be happy to take OS
> recommendations.~

Nice sun4m box :) Do you have a framebuffer with it? NetBSD has pretty
good support for most sbus framebuffers (including antialiased fonts
on the console IIRC - if you're going to be blitting character bitmaps
around they may as well be pleasing :)

David

db9 requirements

[Henry Bond via cctalk]

Good Evening all, hope your week is going well.

I received a sparcstation 10 today and wondered if anyone knew which db25
cable to get to connect to my DEC vt, null modem, cross over, etc, etc.

Also if anyone has experience with this machine I would be happy to take OS
recommendations.



-H