Sparcengine AXi questions

[John Ruschmeyer]

This weekend, I finally got around to playing with a Sparcengine AXi
board that I picked up from another list member some time ago. Already,
I'm starting to think that my temperament is better suited to an AXe (or
an Ultra 5/10). That said, though, a couple of questions:

1) Anybody have a spare for the PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors? I've
got a type 5 keyboard, but I think I'd rather use PS/2 with a KVM.

2) Can the OBP boot from an IDE drive and, if so, any recommendations
for an inexpensive compatible PCI card? I know I should really go SCSI
on this, but I think I prefer cheap plentiful storage even at the
performance penalty.

3) Any good sources for a NVRAM replacement? Mine has a dead battery.

Thanks...
John
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[Micah R Ledbetter-2]

On May 23, 2009, at 20:52:00, John Ruschmeyer wrote:
> 2) Can the OBP boot from an IDE drive and, if so, any recommendations
> for an inexpensive compatible PCI card? I know I should really go SCSI
> on this, but I think I prefer cheap plentiful storage even at the
> performance penalty.

I don't know of any IDE controllers that OBP supports besides the ones  
that come built in to the motherboards to IDE Suns.

I wish I did, because both ports in my Sun Blade 100 have failed,  
annoyingly, and while I have a SCSI card that is supported, the SCSI  
drives I have end up making tons more noise than the rest of the  
machine put together. I liked that the machine was near-silent when it  
was running with an IDE drive.

- Micah
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[Jochen Kunz]

On Sat, 23 May 2009 22:08:28 -0500
Micah R Ledbetter <vlack@...> wrote:

> I wish I did, because both ports in my Sun Blade 100 have failed,
> annoyingly, and while I have a SCSI card that is supported, the SCSI
> drives I have end up making tons more noise than the rest of the
> machine put together. I liked that the machine was near-silent when
> it was running with an IDE drive.
Put a IDE / SATA HBA in it that is supported by the OS of your choice.
Then make a bootable CDR that contains enough to get the OS kernel
loaded and then continues to boot from IDE / SATA. I.e. boot the
kernel from CD and put / on SATA.
--


tsch|_,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/
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[Michael-John Turner-2]

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 10:08:28PM -0500, Micah R Ledbetter wrote:
> I don't know of any IDE controllers that OBP supports besides the ones  
> that come built in to the motherboards to IDE Suns.

I've not tried this myself, but according to the NetBSD/sparc64 FAQ, it's
possible to get the PROM to boot from "standard" PCI IDE controllers:
http://www.netbsd.org/ports/sparc64/faq.html#pci-cards

-mj
--
 Michael-John Turner
 mj@...      <>     http://mjturner.net/
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[Patrick Finnegan]

On Saturday 23 May 2009, Micah R Ledbetter wrote:

> On May 23, 2009, at 20:52:00, John Ruschmeyer wrote:
> > 2) Can the OBP boot from an IDE drive and, if so, any
> > recommendations for an inexpensive compatible PCI card? I know I
> > should really go SCSI on this, but I think I prefer cheap plentiful
> > storage even at the performance penalty.
>
> I don't know of any IDE controllers that OBP supports besides the
> ones that come built in to the motherboards to IDE Suns.
>
> I wish I did, because both ports in my Sun Blade 100 have failed,
> annoyingly, and while I have a SCSI card that is supported, the SCSI
> drives I have end up making tons more noise than the rest of the
> machine put together. I liked that the machine was near-silent when
> it was running with an IDE drive.

Just in case it hasn't been mentioned yet, you can pick up a SCSI to IDE
adapter for probably $50 or so.  Search through past threads in the
rescue archive for details.

Pat
--
Purdue University Research Computing ---  http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge                  ---  http://computer-refuge.org
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