newbie - trying to install solaris 2.6 on sparcstation ipc

i recently acquired a Sparcstation IPC for free.
i'm looking for a bit of technical help getting it going.

i apologize if i'm aiming at the wrong group --
please point me in the proper direction. this is the first
post of any kind i've ever made, i apologize for any of the
various net-i-quette errors i've made. mention them and i'll
remember them.

also, i realize that the sparc station is a toy.
i'm not looking for heroic efforts to get it going.

on the other hand, my guess is that i'm doing something really
foolish, based on pc-o-centric thinking.

it's equiped with 48MB of ram, an internal scsi disk,
and i've temporarily added a cdrom via the external scsi port.

'probe-scsi' looks like this:

ok probe-scsi
Target 3
Unit 0 Disk DEC RZ28M (C) DEC0466
Target 6
Unit 0 Removable Read Only device DEC RRD43 (C) DEC 0064

when i first started trying to get solaris running, i simply issued a
boot disk command. this resulted in 'bad magic number'
and 'does not appear to be executable'. the cdrom wasn't connected.

it seemed reasonable to simply boot from the cdrom,
with the install cd disc for solaris 2.6 loaded and spinning.

'boot cdrom' tries to load a file sd(0,0,0)cdrom.
'boot (0,6)' gives 'does not appear to be executable'.

doesn't this mean the sparc is trying to load a file called
'cdrom' from the harddisk at sd(0,0,0) ?

moving the hard disk to the external buss of an E250
gave the same bad magic number results on the hard disk,
so i (foolishly?) 'format'ed the disk,
booted the e250 off the solaris 2.6 cd disc, and tryed to
"install" solaris 2.6 onto the sparc station's hard disk.

altho the rz28m is a 2g disk,
root S0, swap s1, and usr s6 are all below 634MB.
do they need to be lower? everything below 512MB, perhaps?

i encountered no errors doing this, but back on the sparcstation,
when booting from the hard disk i still get
'does not appear to be executable'. this is with 2.6
freshly 'installed'.

as you can see from the above, i'm fairly confused about
how i should be proceeding.

q: given the 'probe-scsi' results above,
what _is_ the proper boot command to boot from the hard disk,
and to boot from the cdrom.

q: is the sparcstation
(Release 1.6 Version 151 created 90/06/26 17:57:27)
capable of booting from cdrom, and if so, why does it think
boot cdrom refers to 'sd(0,0,0)cdrom'...
isn't cdrom the file name it's looking for on hard disk at (0,0,0) ?

q: when the sparcstation mentions what it can boot off of,
it mentions scsi disks, floppy disk, scsi tape, and network,
but not cdrom.

is this normal, or does it indicate either that it
doesn't consider my particular drive bootable for some reason,
or that it cannot boot from cdrom at all? certainly probe-scsi
sees it, and apparently understands the inquiry to mean
'removable read only device'.

i picked the rrd43 because it is listed as being compatible
with sun stations; it's strapped for 512 block size, and when
i move the jumper probe-scsi hangs. i get the same results
from a matshita cr504.

q: is 2.6 installation media too recent for the sparc station?
if so, what version should i be aiming for?

q: does the hard disk data need to be moved below 512MB? lower?
the ssipc came equiped with the RZ28M,
but must i dig up a 1G or smaller drive anyway?

q: is it invalid to try to install solaris onto the hard disk
for the sparc station by using the e250 hardware?
does the wrong thing get written to the disk because it's
being done on the wrong type of machine?

-jfg


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