new to Sun, with a second-hand Ultra
I'm new to the world of Sun, so please go easy on me. :) I'm having a hard time finding what I need on sun.com, so I hope it is OK to ask questions here.
I have a second-hand Ultra 5 that was saved from the recycle bin. I hope to get it up and running so I can gain some Solaris experience. I have DLed the Sparc ISOs. Where can I find install documentation? I do not have a kbd/mouse though...is this a roadblock or can I work around it? (I see it seems to be a connector that is foreign to me.) It has the 400 MHz SunPCi card installed. Is that usable under Solaris 10?
I'll happily read docs, if I can find them.
# 1
Hello.
If you do not have a Sun keyboard and a Sun mouse you can use a serial cable to connect your Ultra-5 to a PC with an RS-232 serial port. The minimum wiring for the cable is:
Sun (DB-25)PC (DB-9)
2 -- 2 (_not_ 2 -- 3 as for PC-PC!)
3 -- 3
7 -- 5
Sun used a special keyboard connector (newer machines use USB).
When switching on the computer with a keyboard and a monitor connected you press Stop-A (the same way you would press Shift-A). If you have an RS-232 connection to a PC (9600 bauds ?) you send a break signal (this equals a NUL sent at a very low baud rate). This equals pressing "DEL" on a PC to get into the BIOS settings.
Something like "ok" is displayed on the terminal emulation program on your PC. You insert the first CD-Rom (you'll have to burn the ISOs on CDs using the "burn ISO image" option of your CD writing software) into the Ultra and type:
boot cdrom
Now the installation begins...
If you managed to install the OS and do not have a Sun keyboard:
You can add a PCI-USB card to the Ultra-5 (not all PCI-USB cards do work). You can attach a USB keyboard and a USB mouse to the System. However in this case the computer still "thinks" that no keyboard is connected on systems that have a 8-pin Sun keyboard connector. The system configuration files (X-Server) must be modified so that the USB keyboard is used. When booting the system RS-232 I/O is used instead of keyboard/mouse (if no PC is connected to the Ultra-5 there is no I/O but the system will boot with a "black screen"). System management is only possible using RS-232 without a Sun keyboard.
Martin
