I was building the boot tape on the Sun 3/80 untill it took a flying leap
off the deep end!  I have been told that I can boot directly from a miniroot
so I wrote it to tape.  The boot command makes the tape roll (b st(0,20,0)
-s) but nothing happens. I used a block size of 8K and was wondering if this
is the proper size to use with a Sun Sparc 330?  So I started to write the
next tape and the 3/80 died.  Luckly, I have two 3/80's so last night I
loaded up the second one and will give it another shot today.  Also, someone
said that I could not use the MAKEBOOTTAPE from Sun3 but I have not tried
yet.  BTW I think I am going to just reload that other Sun 3/80.

Rick Copeland


At 10:12 PM 2/15/98 -0800, David Brownlee wrote:
>On Sun, 15 Feb 1998, Rick Copeland wrote:
>
>> From: Rick Copeland <rickgc@calweb.com>
>> 
>> If I write a miniroot to a tape (cartridge type used on a Sparc 330) can I
>> boot the mini root directly from the tape?  If so what commands are required
>
>	Providing you write it in the correct format with a boot block it
>	should work... You should be able to adapt
>	 /usr/src/distrib/sun3/MakeBootTape 
>
>> to instruct the Sparc to boot from the tape (the machine is bare and
>> currently has no operating system on the hard drive)?
>
>	I would expect 'b st()' to work.
>
>	On what machine are you building the boot tape?
>
>		David/absolute
>
>Definition of the day:
>'A moot point': Something open to debate... _not_ an irrelevant point.
>(It would be preferable if more of the world could grasp the above)
>
>
>
>