> This may be a silly question, but if I boot into the serial
> console, what would I type to ask it to boot from the
> diskette drive?

depends on the firmware (or was that only for "cdrom" and the scsi device
naming convention changes?)   "boot floppy"

>   ACR> I say buy it and don't have any worries. It can't be
>      > that expensive right?
> 
> It won't be, if the price is too high I won't buy it.

I picked up an SS1+, SS2 and a few other things for ... $1.  :>

>   ACR> You'll probably pay more for the cabling adapters
>      > than the actual machine...
> 
> This one has a frame buffer, but I may take that out.  I
> would most likely bring it up with a serial console and just
> telnet in over the network once NetBSD is up.

I've left the cg6 in my SS2 "just in case" I need to drag out
a keyboard/monitor.  I run xdm on all the boxes normally.
Telnet or ssh to them as needed.  And, an old laptop just
received from a friend running a simple "terminal emulator"
in case I need a serial console...

> I'm guessing the only adaptor I might need straight away
> would be a 10baseT transceiver if the ethernet port is AUI,
> as I think it was on many of the Sun 3 systems.

The "on board" network connection on SS2 is AUI.  Some
of the other models had RJ45's...

> I'll also need to dig up a hard disk, and may need to invest
> in a drive sled, short SCSI and power cable, all of which I
> can get fairly inexpensively from www.memoryx.net. They seem
> to suggest that the SPARCstation 2 uses 3.5" 'narrow SCSI
> drives', which I take to mean 8-bit, single-ended, 5 or
> perhaps 10MHz SCSI.

Yes.  10MHz being "Fast SCSI" (though they keep playing with the
names in SCSI-land) -- synchronous vs. asynchronous operation.

--don