[EdLUG] Old Sun "Ultra 10" workstation up for grabs

[Edinburgh Linux Users Group]

A little more info: I did just try connecting the VGA output directly
from the box to the VGA input on an LCD monitor (bypassing my KVM box)
and that showed the Sun BIOS boot stuff apparently trying to netboot.
There seemed to be some message about NVRAM self test failed (error
U13?) and something about IDPROM contents invalid... guessing it may
have succumbed to that common affliction of machines of a certain age:
the onboard battery finally running down (and indeed googling the errors
leads to https://youtu.be/ql9xo_zhNy0 ).  Apparently this leads to the
machine losing its MAC address, which is why my DHCP server wasn't
serving anything up to it.

Anyway, that's the last I'm doing with it.  All unplugged and off to the
dump in a few days if no antiquarians fancy it.

Tim

On Wed, 2017-06-07 at 17:13 +0100, Edinburgh Linux Users Group wrote:
> Just on the offchance anyone has any interest before I cart this off to
> the ewaste skip at the dump... 
> 
> Sun Ultra 10 workstation (squat tower case, not "pizzabox" style).
> - Think processor was over 400MHz; I forget how much RAM or disk
> - Creator 3D graphics board.
> - Adapter widget for the proprietary Sun graphics port to VGA.
> - Sun keyboard (implies US layout, I think) and 3-button mouse
> (roller-ball based, not optical).
> - More info at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_5/10
> 
> I was successfully running Debian's SPARC releases on it (including a
> lightweight X11 desktop) up until a few Debian versions back, but
> stopped having much reason to use it when VMs on my amd64 boxes got good
> and I retired my last CRT screen... and found the adapter widget didn't
> seem to want to drive my LCD's VGA input (at least not through the KVM
> box I use).  For a while I carried on using it headless by ssh... but it
> was last powered up and logged into it quite a few years ago.
> 
> Just powered it up for first time in ages now and while it sounds
> healthy enough, I can't ssh into it and don't have any way of seeing the
> video output.  Maybe just my DHCP setup has suffered bitrot.  Maybe I
> tried a headless upgrade to the next Debian version and something broke.
> Maybe it's sitting there at an fsck prompt.  It's been too long to
> remember what I was last doing with it; either way I've now no interest
> in sinking any time into trying to recover it.  I think I originally
> installed Debian on it using tftp and the SunOS' BIOS' option to
> netboot, but repeating that'd need being able to see the console.
> 
> Can't imagine this being of any practical value to anyone, unless they
> have the patience to ebay it (whole or in bits).  Might be a nice
> nostalgia trip for someone though :^)
> 
> Free to collect from Marchmont if interested.
> Tim
> 
> 
>