[rescue] Sparc OS Install over serial

[Tom Ponsford]

On a second look, it looks even easier

Check the web page for it:

ftp://minnie.tuhs.org/pub/PDP-11/Vtserver/vtreadme.html

It looks like vanilla ansi C. and your host machine can be x86. So compiling 
is not the issue.
The only issue is creating boot blocks -->  boot image, but it looks lt could 
be done with a little (not mine ) time.
but with the source code available for netbsd and freebsd, it should not be a 
big issue. I would try one of the netboot files just for starters, and go from 
there.

Cheers

Tom Ponsford



Tom Ponsford wrote:
> Mike Hebel wrote:
> 
>> You port that and I'll replace Bill's missing beverage and cough up 
>> another $5. ;-)
> 
> 
> Alas, far too little time, however, I don't think it would be too hard 
> if you didn't run into any endian or cross-compile issues.
> 
> VTserver.as it says,  acts as a virtual tape drive working through the 
> serial port, Much like the ancient pdp TU-8* streaming tape drives. As 
> such it would be painfully slow (depending upon a serial port speed) so 
> the best thing would be to use a cut down unix version ported to an 
> UltraSparc.  ie NetBSD or FreeBSD. It has to be tape image, but there 
> are tools out there to do just that.
> 
> Actually VTsever is built on and works on the host machine, is 
> opensource and ported to Linux and *bsd, its just on the x86 platform.
> 
> I used it to load a small unix to a pdp form my host bsd machine. No 
> ethernet, floppy, tape drive, cdrom, or parallel port.
> 
> It works, it just slow but i'm pretty sure it will do the job.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Tom Ponsford
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I
> 
>> Mike Hebel
>>
>> On Tuesday, January 6, 2004, at 07:06 PM, Tom Ponsford wrote:
>>
>>> Well It looks like its time to port VTserver over to a sparc platform 
>>> :-)
>>>
>>> http://www.shiresoft.com/pdp-11/software/vtserver.html
>>>
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> Tom Ponsford
>>>
>>> Mark T. Valites wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm looking for a way to bootstrap and install any modern OS 
>>>> (preferably
>>>> some flavor of linux) to a SS or Ultra class sparc, but only use the
>>>> serial port - no floppy, cd, network, or hard disk to bootstrap 
>>>> from. My
>>>> console does _not_ need to be on the serial port. Googling has only 
>>>> turned
>>>> up ways of using the serial port as concole during install. I was 
>>>> hoping
>>>> there's a way to pull this off from the prom - does anyone know if 
>>>> this is
>>>> possible?
>>>> -Mark
>>>
>>>
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