[Techtalk] booting sun

[Colleen Hatfield]

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 11:06:03 +0300, Maria Pinjanainen
<maria.pinjanainen at abo.fi> wrote:
 
> Hi!
> I´ll need to install Debian (Sarge) into Sun10 (ultra) computer. I can
> not find howto get it boot with cdrom. I can not find hot to go into bios.

Hi Maria,

If you have a sun keyboard attached to it, put the install disc in the
drive and turn it on.  As it's starting up, the screen will show the
OpenBoot version, the MAC address, serial number, etc, then will say
it's initializing memory.  At any point around this time you can drop
into OpenBoot (the rough equivalent to an x86 BIOS) by holding down
the "Stop" key on the keyboard while you press the "A" key (so "Stop +
A").  This sends the break signal and should give you a prompt that
looks like "ok ".  At this prompt, type "boot cdrom".  As long as
there's a device alias in OpenBoot for your cdrom drive, this should
work.

If you have a standard PC keyboard hooked to it instead of a Sun
keyboard, "Ctrl+Break" usually works to send the break signal.

I you are talking to the Ultra 10 via serial console from another
machine (instead of having a keyboard and monitor directly hooked to
it), the procedure is similar, but you'll have to figure out how to
send the break signal with your terminal program.  In minicom it's
"Ctrl+A,Z" to get into the minicom menu, then "F" to send break.

Hope that helps,

- Colleen