Hi!

>A fried of mine has a sun 3/80 that isnt doing anything, and
>I thought it would be a good project to get it up and running.

Sure. And you're right here, because we all do such things :-)

>It has 16MB of ram (Im pretty sure) a color monitor, mouse, kb, etc.

Hey pretty cool.          

>It is lacking a hard drive, though, and therefore is without an OS.

Get some 3.5" SCSI harddisk. The older the better. Used 1Gig disks
are pretty cheap nowadays and 1Gig is A LOT of room for a Sun3.

>I don't have access to SunOS, and NetBSD seems to be the only OS
>that supports it anymore.

Not to stop you from running NetBSD, but SunOS boot tapes are
available at the Sun3/Sun3x-Archive:    
        http://sun3arc.krupp.net

If you do not have a QIC tape but a small old SCSI harddisk and
some modern Sun nearby, then you can build an "install disk":

Make some partitions on that disk:    
        a) at least 60 MB (or 200 MB for the uncompressed images)
        b) at least 10 MB (for the miniroot)
        c) the whole disk (as usual)

Newfs partition a. Download the tape images from sun3arc.     
Mount partition a and make the following directories:
        # mount /dev/sd2a /mnt
        # cd /mnt
        # mkdir -p export/exec/kvm/sun3x_sunos_4_1_1
        # mkdir -p export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1
        # mkdir -p export/share/sunos_4_1_1
If you're not short with space, unompress the tape files first.
This will speed up the installation considerably later. But you'll
need about 200 MB on partition a for that.

Move the files to the apropriate places:
tape1.08        ./export/exec/kvm/sun3x_sunos_4_1_1/kvm
tape1.05        ./export/exec/kvm/sun3x_sunos_4_1_1/miniroot_sun3x
tape1.12        ./export/exec/kvm/sun3x_sunos_4_1_1/sys
tape1.02        ./export/exec/kvm/sun3x_sunos_4_1_1/xdrtoc
tape1.06        ./export/exec/proto_root_sunos_4_1_1
tape1.24        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/debugging
tape1.16        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/demo
tape2.03        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/games
tape1.27        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/graphics
tape1.09        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/install
tape1.10        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/networking
tape1.18        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/openwindows_demo
tape1.19        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/openwindows_fonts
tape2.06        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/openwindows_programmers
tape1.17        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/openwindows_users
tape2.05        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/security
tape1.26        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/shlib_custom
tape1.25        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/sunview_programmers
tape1.13        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/sunview_users
tape1.11        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/system_v
tape1.22        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/tli
tape1.20        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/user_diag
tape1.07        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/usr
tape1.28        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/uucp
tape2.04        ./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/versatec
tape1.21        ./export/share/sunos_4_1_1/manual

tape2.10        ./_copyright

If you haven't uncompressed the files, download
http://sun3arc.krupp.net/install/SunOS411.sun3x.CDZ.xdrtoc

Copy this file to /mnt/export/exec/kvm/sun3x_sunos_4_1_1/xdrtoc

Now create the avail_arches file:
        # echo "sun3.sun3x.sunos.4.1.1" >/mnt/avail_arches

The installation tree is now done. Prepare the miniroot:
	# cp tape1.05 /tmp/miniroot.Z
	# uncompress /tmp/miniroot (if you haven't already)
	# dd if=/tmp/miniroot of=/dev/rsd2b bs=63k
If you have room for another miniroot partition, do it again:
	# dd if=/tmp/miniroot of=/dev/rsd2d bs=63k

Ok, unmount the disk and unplug it. Put it on the 3/80.

The installation procedure is as follows:

Boot into the miniroot:
	> b sd(0,10,0) -sw

Mount the install partition:
	# mount /dev/sd2a /usr/etc/install/tar

Rename the umount command (SunOS tries this several times for
no good reason):
	# mv /bin/umount /bin/um

Install:
	# suninstall

After installation, make sure you copy a fresh miniroot on
partition b. You can either do that from the newly installed
SunOS or (if you have it) from the other miniroot on partition
d.

-------------------------------------------------------
Hope that helps!

Peter