> Does anyone remember how Suns (sun3/sun4/sun4c) boot from tape?  I guess
> the PROM loads the first file on the tape expecting it to be the second
> stage boot program.  This program should then probably copy a miniroot
> from tape to disk.

That's the way it was in the old days.  You'd boot from st(), that would
bring in the boot program, it'd prompt you with "Boot: ", and you'd boot
the Standalone Copy program next.  That would, of course, prompt you for a
source (the miniroot) and the destination (swap partition).

Things were different in SunOS 4.1.1, the last time bootable tapes were
provided.  Here's the beginning of the TOC from the sun4c version of that tape:

SunOS 4.1.1 700-2687-10 of Thu Oct 11 22:32:51 PDT 1990 from Sun Release Engineering
ARCH sun4c
VOLUME 1
 Vol File             Name       Size	Type
   1    0            munix    3022848	image
   1    1           XDRTOC       4096	toc
   1    2        mini-root    7168000	image
   1    3             root      74183	tarZ
   1    4              usr   11466687	tarZ
   1    5              Kvm    2683465	tarZ
   1    6          Install     459841	tarZ
...

I don't recall if doing "> b st() " resulted in the MUNIX kernel being booted
directly or not.  (i.e., without intervention from some second-level boot
somewhere.)

I once tried to create a 4.1.3 bootable 8mm tape, but the different block
size and the lack of tools to create custom XDR-format TOC files proved to be
a stumbling block, so I quit working on it.

	- Greg