>>>>> "PeeWee" == PeeWee  <peewee@zerby.com> writes:

PeeWee> Howdy...  My roommate has graced our apartment with a
PeeWee> beautiful sun 3/60.  Since I am the local sysadmin type, I've
PeeWee> been "contracted" get an OS on the thing and get it on our
PeeWee> network.

[...]

PeeWee> So I pulled the 1.1 sun3 binaries from my local mirror and
PeeWee> read the install guide.  I have a 1/4" tape drive hooked to
PeeWee> the 3/60, so I decided that a tape load would be in order.
PeeWee> The other machine that I have access to with a 1/4" tape drive
PeeWee> is a Sparc 1+ at work running Solaris 2.4.  I attempted to
PeeWee> make my boot tape with the following script, which is almost
PeeWee> straight out of the install guide.

	Assuming that Solaris didn't do something completely stupid
with the tape (which is indeed possible), I'll make some more tape
comments.

1. Firstly, clean the drive.  With QIC, you can either get in there
    with a cotton swab, or you can get a cleaner cartridge for it.  If
    you're using a cleaner cartridge, you may need to tell the machine
    to 'boot' off of it to get it to do the cleaning.

   I can't stress this enough... tape drives (especially after sitting
    unused or after handling 'old' dirty tapes) need cleaning.
    Several times...

2. Next, You have to ensure that you're writing the right density.
    Sun3's typically came with 60meg drives.  Most modern systems come
    with 150 meg drives.  Don't dispair --- read your manuals.  You
    should be able to convince something to write a 60 meg tape.  It
    may help if you use an actual 600A tape (as opposed to the 6250
    tapes)

3. Lastly, you may find that the old drive is out of alignment --- I
    have that problem with my Sun3's drive (will read it's own tapes,
    but nobody else's).  In that case, a possibility is to take the
    drive (should have a SCSI interface, but that interface is a
    separate card) and plug it into another machine to write the
    tape.  This is a bother, and netbooting shouldn't be any harder
    than this would be.

Dave.

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|David Gilbert, PCI, Richmond Hill, Ontario.  | Two things can only be     |
|Mail:      dgilbert@jaywon.pci.on.ca         |  equal if and only if they |
|http://www.pci.on.ca/~dgilbert               |   are precisely opposite.  |
---------------------------------------------------------GLO----------------