So today I grabbed one of these cute boxes at ASU surplus (it was 
sitting there, unguarded, with the notation "1Gb RAM, $10", how could I 
resist? :D)

When it boots, it announces it's setting output to ttya because there's 
no keyboard (damn Sun... why can't they use PS/2 keyboards like SGI 
did?)

So I hook my old dumb terminal (C.Itoh CIT-101) to ttya.  I see nothing 
on the screen.  Regular passthrough cable.

Some sites suggest I need to use a null modem cable 
(http://www.idevelopment.info/data/Unix/Solaris/SOLARIS_UsingSerialConsol
es.shtml) but these sites also insinuate ttya is a DB9 when it is in 
fact a DB25. :/

It's possible that the cable's bad, but can anyone confirm it needs to 
be a null-modem one before I bother fiddling around with rewiring the 
cable (it's the kind you can open the ends and rewire the leads.

Now, of course, the hard disc was pulled.  Will there be any issues 
with using a standard PC-pulled IDE drive, or any other prep required?  
Or is it just "insert the Solaris/*BSD/Linux CD, boot from CD, pray"?

Since honestly, I have no good application aside from "WOW!  I remember 
seeing machines like that when I went to see the tour of a now-defunct 
dotcom!", the only real thing I'd like to do on it is run a real 
"commercial Unix feel" desktop like CDE (no, XFCE is NOT good enough) 
with the modern nicities like Firefox and a post-0.91 version of GIMP.

If I can't find a good use for it, are there any parts with decent 
second-uses on regular x86 boxes?

The RAM I coveted is (cry) 50ns FPM or something...

There's an interesting card in PCI slot 2:  Looks like SCSI+Ethernet... 
can it be enjoyed on an x86?

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