Subject: Re: a silly question
To: None <mcmahill@mtl.mit.edu>
From: Erin Corliss <ecorliss@coffee.corliss.net>
List: port-sparc
Date: 10/10/1999 14:18:58
> > 
> > Is there any way to get a Sparc to use a PC 1.44 Meg floppy drive?
> 
> the actual PC hardware or a floppy which has been formatted for dos, but
> in a sparc drive?

The actual drive.

See, I have a Sparc 2 with no floppy drive.  I have a SCSI CD-ROM drive
and several SCSI hard drives of various sizes.  I can write to these SCSI
drives by hooking them to my PC...  I can't netboot the thing because the
only trasceiver I have for it is 10-base-t, and I don't have a hub or an
uplink cable. The only options I can see for booting and installing an OS
are:

1.  burning a bootable CD with a simulated 1.44 meg disk.  Problem is, I
don't know if the Sparc will boot the CD like this.

2.  Dumping a pre-formatted hard disk image to one of the SCSI drives.  I
don't have a disk image to do this with, so I'd have to ask on a mailing
list somewhere for a kind soul to make one...(hint hint)

3.  I heard that you can connect two machines with thicknet ethernet ports
together with a short ribbon cable and it will work -- then I could
netboot from my linux machine.

Do you know of any other ways?