[rescue] Getting back into Sun - Blade 100 or Ultra 5?

[Jonathan Chapman]

"Stack underflow" is FORTH telling you that you (or something you ran) wanted to pull an element off the stack and it was already empty.

Booting CD on SS2 requires the boot sd(0,6,2)​ string rather than the later boot cdrom​ supported on newer SPARCstations. You also need a CD-ROM that supports 512-byte blocks. All of my old Sun SCSI CD drives (and many non-Sun branded ones) have needed the CD drive itself recapped, the earlier the drive the more likely it's a problem. Some of the Sony ones actually had electrolyte leakage damage on the PCBs. (so far Sun-branded SCSI DVD drives have all been fine).

The SS2 is a pretty nice machine, like Dave said, run SunOS 4 on it if you do get it up and going! SPARC32 is not great with Solaris (Slowlaris, Slowloris). Even the later TI SuperSPARC/MicroSPARC machines are pretty slow with it.

FWIW you definitely made the right choice with Ultra 5 vs. Sun Blade 100. The Blade 100 was a major cost reduction attempt, and it shows. I don't know if you can get Solaris to support it, but booting off an IDE DiskOnModule Flash device and using a PCI SATA card worked fine under NetBSD and OpenBSD on SPARC64. Nowadays you're probably best off getting a StarTech IDE to SATA adapter and running an old quality SATA SSD off it (I personally like the old Intel 330 series SSDs, they're very cheap nowadays).

Thanks,
Jonathan

On Friday, November 22nd, 2024 at 07:59, Christopher Purdy via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:

> Thanks everyone! I decided on the U5 as I found an "in original box" that looked clean and had everything except the hdd - and I had an old type 5 keyboard and mouse in storage. I'm going to experiment a bit on the hdd - I know about the 120GB limit... and am going to attempt (at least see what happens) with a SATA / IDE adapter and a 64gb ssd drive.. I'll fall back to a 7200rpm ide drive if that doesnt work.
>
> A bit of the backstory here:
> I have an old SS2 that I pulled out of storage and attempted to get going over the summer - and again today - it will manage getting to openboot... and after quite a bit of playing and trying some different CDROM's I had in storage - I decided to leave it and move on. I could get it to recognize its HDD (ancient barracuda drive - LOUD!), but would give a stack underflow error when it tried to boot from it.. it also would see my CDROM's but the first I tried (DEC model) seemed to not spin up at all... The second (NEC Multispin 6Xi) would spin up and read the disc, but kept giving stack underflow errors as well... I decided that instead of putting any more $$$ into this machine I'd move up to an ultra series - which leads us to my original post.
>
> I am curious as to what the stack underflow error is about though? That's a new one on me...
>
> - Chris
>
> On Thu, Nov 21, 2024 at 2:49 PM Lionel Peterson via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
>
>> I think the deciding factors of which system is 'best' comes down to a handful of factors (in no particular order):
>>
>> Cost
>> Completeness
>> Noise
>> Size
>> Power
>>
>> The U5 and SB100 easily meet any reasonable noise, size, and power requirements. Cost and Completeness are dependent on what's available when you're shopping. Be careful not to just assume missing memory, drives, etc are easily available verify availability of needed accy before committing to a system.
>>
>> (My favorite system was the Ultra 2, but that's because I worked with them.)
>>
>> I'd suggest focusing on a system that has maximum RAM and can accept a cheap 2nd and maybe 3rd NIC to help with various networking demonstrations you want to provide.
>>
>> A current browser would be tough, not sure of options there...
>>
>> Literally anything from a Sun4c or newer would be fine for your purposes, IMHO.
>>
>> Good luck,
>>
>> Ken
>>
>>> On Nov 21, 2024, at 11:39, Christopher Purdy via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> After a long hiatus, looking to get an older Sun to show the kids for our homeschool computer class.. Leaning toward the Ultra 5, but not sure. Planning on an older Solaris 7 or 8 install - possibly a BSD flavor down the road.
>>>
>>> Pro's and Cons of each?
>>>
>>> I've read about the anemic cache on the Blade... but wasn't sure about the actual performance differences.. Mainly just planning to set up a web server so they can get a feel for networking and such.. It would be nice to have some sort of viable web browser for simpler pages and to get software so I can show them installation and compiling, etc..
>>>
>>> Main reason for selecting these two is the 'bay has them relatively cheaply - but any of the higher end workstations are 2-10X more expensive.. the days of cheap SUN goodies are gone it appears.
>>>
>>> On that note - if anyone has some decent SUN kit in the Detroit / Flint area let me know, I'd prefer not pay shipping on these beasts. In a perfect world - an Ultra 30/60 with working SCSI drives would be perfect...
>>>
>>> --
>>> Christopher Purdy
>>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> rescue list - http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> rescue list - http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org
>
> --
>
> Christopher Purdy
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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