[rescue] Cobalt Qube 3 Solaris?

[Alexander Jacocks]

For all those asking, this is a Cobalt Cube 3, which has an AMD K6-2, and is quite close to being PC compatible, so vintage Linux does indeed run on it, and folks have gotten NetBSD 3.x/4.x mostly working.

I’d just like to do something interesting with it, since mine works 100%, after I successfully created a power supply, with assistance from a kind person who took a photo of the pinout on an original PSU.

Mine also has an original OS load, from Comcast, on it. Apparently Comcast once sold these as small business web servers, maybe in concert with a business cable internet subscription.

- Alex

> On May 20, 2024, at 3:48 PM, Jonathan Chapman via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
> 
> Alex,
> 
> Unlikely you'll be able to run Solaris x86 on it, as it's not PC compatible. I think there's a NetBSD bootloader for it, I'd imagine you could coax modern Linux onto it as well with a chainloader (IIRC it has kernel naming and size restrictions as the original MIPS machines did).
> 
> I have one, I need to recap it and hack on it -- mine's got a bunch of bulging capacitors.
> 
> Thanks,
> Jonathan
> 
> On Monday, May 20th, 2024 at 14:46, Alexander Jacocks via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
>> Folks,
>> 
>> Has anyone attempted to run Solaris x86 on a Cobalt Qube? I have one that is a rather cool looking device, but as a web server it is of course unusable, due to (many, severe!) security issues.
>> 
>> I was thinking of trying to pay tribute to the combination of Sun and Cobalt by running Solaris x86. To do that, I'd need to install a video card in the PCI slot, which I know would only be visible after boot, but I suspect that's not a big deal. The odd boot mechanism would be more the issue.
>> 
>> Has anyone experimented with alternative OSes on the Qube 3 and its RaQ cousins?
>> 
>> - Alex
> 
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