Re: [TCLUG:14315] sun box - kind of off the subject

["Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom" <carls@agritech.com>]

>There are a couple of things you can do.
>
>- Get a SCSI CD-ROM drive and hook it up to the back and boot off that, needs
>to be ID6 and 512 block size, it's usually a jumper on the back.  If you have
>that nasty old 50 connector that looks like a huge serial port, I have a cable
>you can borrow that converts it to standard SCSI.  They're pretty tough to
>find.
        
        here's the info I got from a friend of mine, after asking about the
same problem.

>If you've got access to a recent, major brand SCSI CDROM, it should boot a
>sparc no problem. There is a Sparc CDROM FAQ floating around prominently
>that implies there is something special in Sun CDROMs - it lies.  All that
>is neccessary is a recent (8x and later usually) Toshiba or
>Matsushita/Panasonic complete SCSI-II implementation that includes the SCSI
>MODE SELECT command. The Sparc needs 512 byte block sizes,and early CDROMs
>were engineered for PC's that generally wanted 1K or 2K block sizes, and
>weren't "user" adjustable - thus the proliferation of "solder hacks" to old
>SCSI CDROMs to make them work with Sun. The lie also allows people to hock
>genuine Sun CDROM drives (1X, 2X, 4X) for prices beginning at $50.
>
>The Sun sends a SCSI CDROM device it finds a SCSI MODE SELECT command to
>knock it down to 512 byte blocksize before it tries to access it. Mine is a
>12X Toshiba SCSI-II.

Carl Soderstrom
System Administrator    307 Brighton Ave. 
Minnesota DHIA	        Buffalo, MN	
carls@agritech.com      (612) 682-1091