The SPARCbook 2 uses a propreiatary boot ROM instead of a Sun OPENBOOT
PROM. This was rectified in the SPARCbook 3 line and higher.

Dan

On Fri, 2 Apr 1999, Jay Maynard wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 02, 1999 at 08:55:22AM -0500, D. J. Rausch wrote:
> > As the owner of a Tadpole Sparcbook 2, I'd like to replace the existing
> > SunOS 4.1.2 installation with a free OS.
> > 
> > >From the mailing list archives, it appears that no one has been able to
> > install either NetBSD or Linux on this machine.  What are the major
> > obstacles?  Is anyone still pursuing this, or has it become a lost
> > cause?
> 
> I asked the folks at Tadpole about this, and they were not encouraging: it
> seems the 2 uses proprietary hardware for which no documentation is
> available. According to them, we're stuck with SunOS. (Yech bleagh.)
> 
> Anyone have any inside contacts at Tadpole who might be able to pry loose
> internal hardware docs or driver source? They don't sell or support these
> any more, and have gone to standard hardware int he SPARCbook 3 series, so
> they gain nothing by keeping the stuff under wraps.
>