new to sparc, not new to gentoo

smeets_marc · Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2003 9:43 pm Post subject: new to sparc, not new to gentoo

Hello

I've got two old sparc systems, a sparcstation5 and a sparcstation20 (both sun4m afaik).
They are not killing machines but running gentoo on it seems like fun.
The station5 is booting fine into solaris 7, but the station20 is giving some problems.

It will not give output to the screen. During POST it doesn;t give errors (no leds on keyboard are on), when i press stop+a and then enter boot I can see that the system reboots. So I geuss its working fine.
So, do you know a ok prompt command so I can have output to the screen? " screen" output doens't work. Will the system work fine if the vga adapter is broken? Which program does portage has so I can see if my sparc gives any output on the serial connector?

Are these systems any good for gentoo?

Thanks in advance

bent

torradan · Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2003 2:09 am Post subject:

a regular null cable works just fine on a sparc20. if you don't have the breakout cable, its treated as a normal serial port.

if you want to pipe out to serial, you must have NOTHING connected to the machine. no keyboard, no monitor.

you can use any terminal program to see if the sparc20 is working. just set it to 9600, 8N1.

minicom and kermit seem to be the favorites to use.

peregrine root # cat .kermrc
set line /dev/ttyS1
set speed 9600
set serial 8N1
set carrier-watch off

thats the kermit config file set for this machine here. make sure the line is set properly (ttyS0, ttyS1, whatever)

plug the nullmodem cable in, start kermit, and type connect... then turn on the sparcstation and you should get some info.
_________________
-Todd <todd@gentoo.org>
-Gentoo/SPARC Developer

bent · Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2003 10:11 am Post subject:

smeets_marc · Posted: Fri May 16, 2003 8:38 pm Post subject:

sorry for the kick...but I havn't had any time for my sparcs the last month, now I have.

I have taken a much better look at both systems, and indeed I borrowed a vga adpter from the 5 and put it in the 20. Works perfect. But I must say that working via a terminal cable with minicom is fun.

Right now I'm gathering some information before installing gentooon on the systems/one of the systems. But, frankly, I'm afraid 32 mb is to less for the sparcstation20...and 64mb can't make the sparcstation5 fast enough. Am I right?

Where can I find a store for some sparc memory? Or do I really have to search on ebay?

torradan · Posted: Mon May 19, 2003 12:59 pm Post subject:

ebay ebay ebay

There is always memory on there for sparcstations, and its pretty cheap. bump it up as much as you can afford to. I have 228 Megs on my sparcstation 20 and it does fairly well.
_________________
-Todd <todd@gentoo.org>
-Gentoo/SPARC Developer

Diezel · Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2003 11:01 pm Post subject:

Did you get Gentoo running on the Sparcstation 5. I'm intressted because I get one of them in a few weeks and I was planing on trying to make a Gentoo or a LFS install to it.
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smeets_marc · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 3:12 pm Post subject:

well, I donated the ss5 to a friend. He has OpenBSD installed on it.
The ss20 is standing in my room...not enough time to play with it. But, want to make some time this weekend to start using the second cpu (150MHz) and the 512 MB Ram for my ss20

(bought on ebay like advised above).

As fas as I know, the ss5 and the ss20 are not that much different in hardware. So when I have gentoo installed on my ss20 I will drop a line here. However, reading the reactions on this forum, gentoo installation on ss20 and ss5 should be ok. Using it will be ok if you put enough ram in it.