> 
> Hi there, I just joined the sun3 mailing list.
> 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.
> It has 16MB of ram (Im pretty sure) a color monitor, mouse, kb, etc.
> It is lacking a hard drive, though, and therefore is without an OS.
> I don't have access to SunOS, and NetBSD seems to be the only OS
> that supports it anymore.

Sunos can be found at sun3arc.krupp.net.  It is most advantageous
to get it and use it as a base from which to install netbsd.
Alas, it only can be installed via tape, so you will need to find
a scsi 60mb archive or wangtek drive to hang outboard on the 3/80.

NetBSD runs fine on it, and the machine will hold 40mb of ram with
4mb simms.  YOU MUST PUT THEM IN IN THE PROPER ORDER, or they will
not work.  Look on sun3arc.krupp.net by http for the field engineer's
diagrams of the motherboard, and it will show you how to put them in.
If not, load up all 1 meg simms and keep the 16mb.  It works fine
with that.

> I have a Linux machine that I can run bootp (or rarp) and tftp on.
> Can I boot it off of this?  Shold I buy a Hard drive for it
> (I assume its just SCSI, I can get a few hundred MB drive for cheap)
> or can I run it NFS-root from the linux machine?  I have plenty of
> space to spare on that box.
> Ive heard rumors about Linux's NFS not working right with SUN...
> is that the case?

I use a pair of Maxtor LXT-213XY drives in mine, and an external
RZ26 1.2 gig drive with a scsi tape.   Almost anything of 200mb
or larger will work, but if you put two drives into the machine,
some people have cooling problems.  Try one drive of say 500mb
and use that as the main drive and hang everything else outboard.
If you lack a second drive sled, use the first sled as a pattern
and drill two holes through the back mounting holes of the sled,
once the sled is positioned correctly, then space the drive up
off the metal chassis on a pair of nuts slightly larger than the
screws (or proper spacers if you can find them).  Works fine.
 
> Thanks in advance for any help,
> Steve Roylance

Alas, mine is down for a while, since the sun mono monitor blew
over the weekend, and I can't seem to get it to come up in diag
mode out the serial port.  Also, my nvram chip is kaput, so I
need to replace that, too.

Good LUck.   They are nice little machines, once you get them
going, and are fairly fast.  I would use the latest snapshot,
which seems to have sun3x support, since it probably will work
better.

Bob Keys