Sun Ultra 10

[Tom Ward]

You will need a null modem cable.  If you're going to run many headless 
systems you might consider making your own using head shells, ribbon 
cable and RJ-45 connectors.  There's information on that at 
http://yost.com/computers/RJ45-serial/index.html.  If you're using more 
that two it's a lot easier to plug/unplug the RJ-45 connectors.  It's 
more work up front, but pays off in the long run.

Until now I've used TeraTerm for console software under Windows.  
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA002416/teraterm.html
But this morning I see a new version of PuTTY is out that has serial 
support.  I'll be switching to that and finally letting go of TeraTerm.  
I don't recommend HyperTerm.  I've seen some systems (HP PA-RISC) that 
just won't work correctly with it.  Minicom works great under Linux for 
console access.

The Ultra 5 and 10 are sort of like PC's with a SPARC CPU grafted in.  
They use IDE disks.  You may be limited on how large a disk you can use 
for the boot disk. 

You can run up to Solaris 10 on it or Linux for Sparc.  You may find 
some info at Sunsolve, http://sunsolve.sun.com/, for the Ultra 10, but 
these days you won't get too far without a support contract.

Sun made several combo cards.  Combining network and SCSI.  They're 
called swift cards.  So you've got SCSI and IDE and two NICs.  You can 
learn a lot on that box.  Have fun with it.

Regards,
Tom


fouldragon at aol.com wrote:
> 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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