Installing Solaris 2.6 on a Sun SPARCstation 5 #UNIXtober 2021

Back to the Sun SPARCstation 5! In this second #UNIXtober 2021 video, I will replace the NVRAM and install Solaris 2.6. There's quite a bit of detail about properly configuring a CD-ROM drive to boot the OS installation media. There may be some other surprises at the end... ;)

00:00 Intro
00:46 Installing the NVRAM chip
03:54 The right CD-ROM drive for the system
08:27 Configuring the NVRAM
11:04 Booting from CD-ROM!
13:03 First look at Solaris
15:49 But can it play...
16:50 Closing remarks

This is the correct NVRAM chip from Amazon (affiliate link):

https://amzn.to/4azzHbY

This is the NVRAM chip that I ordered from Digi-Key:

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/d...

List of CD-ROM drives known to work or not work with SPARCstations:

https://www.sun3arc.org/FAQ/cdrom/sun...

Toshiba XM-4101B drives will fit in these cases properly.

Manual for the Plextor PX40tse. With the "block" jumper set, this drive definitely works for booting Solaris install media on a SPARCstation 5.

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/311...

Sun apparently redesigned the SPARCstation 5 case lid and floppy drive to accomodate regular sized optical drives:

http://www.sgistuff.net/collection/ot...

The unofficial Sun DOOM page:

http://jameslick.com/jlick/sundoom/de...

And the Sun SPARC Doom binaries on archive.org:

https://archive.org/download/sundgado...

Note: The file says that it's a tar.gz file, but it's actually just a tar file.  That's actually good because Solaris 2.6 doesn't ship with gzip installed!

#UNIX #SPARC

• #science_technology
• #unix
• #unixtober
• #sparc