Hi! i got an old sun sparcstation 5, but i have no monitor for it. I can't make any kind of connection to the machine (terminal etc.), i wonder is it possible to connect a normal floppy drive from my pc to boot, so i could install a new os and to get a terminal connection. The guy i got it from said that there could be solaris os inside and the computer should work fine....

-sorry for the bad english- :)

Hi,

Did you try connecting from your PC to the Sparc's serial port a via a null modem cable and with hyperterminal set to 9600,8,n,1?

If yes and you can't connect you can do it this way:

Turn on the sparc, wait a few seconds, press STOP+A
Type: setenv diag-switch? true

Then try connecting with null modem cable again. This way you should be able to connect to the machine via a null modem cable and boot from cdrom, install the os from command line etc.

You can always get an adapter plug (13W3-VGA I think) and use a standard PC monitor on it....

All this is assuming you don't have the PC and SPARC networked... if you do, then can you telnet to the SPARC? If so then you could just run Exceed or a similar Xwin application on your PC and use a remote display instead :)

Thanks! i think that will help me a lot :)

hmmm.. i wonder...i have pc and the sparc networked, but how can i telnet to the sparc, i don'r know the ip-address of the sparc

-sorry for the bad english-

hi! give the command(s):
#ifconfig -a
(check to see the ethernet address... except lo0... as its loopback other is you ip-address referred next to 'inet 192....' on second line...)

or else

#netstat -in
lo0 ....
hme0 ...

the STOP+a thing and the command didn't help....no connection with serial cable :((

i found the ip put the sparc won't allow me to connect....says "connection refused" all the time :((

I'm not that good in sol at all... I have a xwin software thing... but when I connect to the unix machines... it never worked :( Is there some configuration need to be done on the unix machine so that it will accept connection requests from xwin clients?

Thanks all!

Look for VGA adapter on eBay. There are people selling new ones for $15-17. I bought one and now use my SS10 and SS20 on old 17" PC monitor.

Item 1) If you can telnet to the server and not login as root it's because root is configured to only allow you to login on the console.

Item 2) Do you have a sun keyboard plugged in? if so, the serial port will not be the console and you will not get a prompt.

If the OS is Solaris 7 or lower there is a way to resolve item 1 if it has not been patched.

I suggest you remove the keyboard, reboot the box with a pc/serial/null-modem cable. You should see the computer booting in the terminal window. you will need to send a break key to that terminal. Your terminal software will vary on this procedure. Once you have an "ok" prompt, you can issue a "boot cdrom" or "boot sd(6,0,0) depending on how old the boot prom is.

Thanks,
-Darkavich