Sun

A warm hello to all the Sun-ers on Nekochan.

I recently aquired one complete Tadpole/RDI UltraBook IIi (400Mhz, 512Mb ram, 1*12 Gb hdd, ATI video, battery) and one incomplete UltraBook (166Mhz, functional but no ram, hdd, battery & power brick) to be used for spare parts for the IIi ...

After some struggle with the Solaris 10 installation (as only the 3/05 Solaris 10 images are compatible with the boot image from tadpole's site) i finaly managed to have a portable Sparc machine

As i saw that there are other UltraBook owners here on Nekochan, i want to ask you some questions (for which i did not find answers using google):

- I have an Accurite Travel Floppy 144 without any power brick. I connected the floppy to the UltraBook but i didn't find any device associated with it. Do i need some special voodoo to enable it ? Do i need a power brick for it ? (if so, can anyone tell me the req voltage and connector polarity ?)

- Does anyone know of other PCMCIA cards usable under Solaris 10 other than the ones listed on tadpole's site ?

- Do you know from where i can source some more HDD caddys for the UltraBook ? I would very much like to have separate hdds installed with every Solaris version. Are the caddys or the connectors compatible with some other PC laptops ?

- How do you protect your case from scratches ?

And some Solaris N00B questions (RTFM answers ok as long as you provide a link ):

- I tried installing the latest 10_Recommended patches and ALL refused to install with various error codes. Is there any trick on installing the patch cluster on Solaris 10 3/05 ?

- Did anyone succesfuly updated the Solaris 10 on their UltraBook to 11/06 ? How ? In my tries, i managed to install a botched 11/06 (with the 3/05 Tadpole boot cd and a lot of manual intervention). Except from some driver errors at boot it worked ok until i installed the latest patch cluster. Which FUBARed a ton of drivers including some Tadpole OEM ones

- I know my HP/UX, my Linux & my IRIX ... but i am a Solaris novice. Any links from where i can get some info on Solaris 10 and it's particularities ? (the latest Solarises worked with were 1.1 and 2.5.1 back in their day)

Thank you all very much.

psergiu wrote: A warm hello to all the Sun-ers on Nekochan.

I recently aquired one complete Tadpole/RDI UltraBook IIi (400Mhz, 512Mb ram, 1*12 Gb hdd, ATI video, battery) and one incomplete UltraBook (166Mhz, functional but no ram, hdd, battery & power brick) to be used for spare parts for the IIi ...

After some struggle with the Solaris 10 installation (as only the 3/05 Solaris 10 images are compatible with the boot image from tadpole's site) i finaly managed to have a portable Sparc machine

You can install Solaris 10 11/06 right off the DVD. Your UltraBook IIi will work fine, just don't expect pcmcia support.

psergiu wrote: As i saw that there are other UltraBook owners here on Nekochan, i want to ask you some questions (for which i did not find answers using google):

- I have an Accurite Travel Floppy 144 without any power brick. I connected the floppy to the UltraBook but i didn't find any device associated with it. Do i need some special voodoo to enable it ? Do i need a power brick for it ? (if so, can anyone tell me the req voltage and connector polarity ?)

No idea, haven't had the need for floppy support in my UB.

psergiu wrote: - Does anyone know of other PCMCIA cards usable under Solaris 10 other than the ones listed on tadpole's site ?

I've used wifi (cisco 340 & 350), CF & SD cards (via CF to PCMCIA and PCMCIA multireader), CF serial card in CF to PCMCIA adapter.

psergiu wrote: - Do you know from where i can source some more HDD caddys for the UltraBook ? I would very much like to have separate hdds installed with every Solaris version. Are the caddys or the connectors compatible with some other PC laptops ?

I got one on eBay. Don't know if a PC caddy will work.

psergiu wrote: - How do you protect your case from scratches ?

Clip your nails?
Paint will chip here and there depending on use and abuse, that's inevitable.

psergiu wrote: And some Solaris N00B questions (RTFM answers ok as long as you provide a link ):

- I tried installing the latest 10_Recommended patches and ALL refused to install with various error codes. Is there any trick on installing the patch cluster on Solaris 10 3/05 ?

- Did anyone succesfuly updated the Solaris 10 on their UltraBook to 11/06 ? How ? In my tries, i managed to install a botched 11/06 (with the 3/05 Tadpole boot cd and a lot of manual intervention). Except from some driver errors at boot it worked ok until i installed the latest patch cluster. Which FUBARed a ton of drivers including some Tadpole OEM ones

- I know my HP/UX, my Linux & my IRIX ... but i am a Solaris novice. Any links from where i can get some info on Solaris 10 and it's particularities ? (the latest Solarises worked with were 1.1 and 2.5.1 back in their day)

Thank you all very much.

You can install 11/06 without the Tadpole boot cd. You wont have the extra laptop features (pcmcia, power management...) so your UB will basically be a Ultra10. Otherwise stick to 3/05 and install patches that don't require a kernel patch. If you patch the kernel, you'll also loose pcmcia support. There's work in progress in OpenSolaris in order to support UltraBooks.

So, I've joined the UB2i club.

http://www.floodgap.com/iv/2833

As sold, it was a 400MHz unit, with ATI 3D Expression (Sun has the framebuffer in /dev/fbs/m640, so I think this is a PGX24) graphics, three hard disks (two 12GB 4200rpm and one 80GB 7200rpm) and 1GB of RAM. However, OpenFirmware said there was only 512MB, and Solaris 10 froze about a minute or so after reaching the desktop. Some troubleshooting found the dud RAM module, but now it just has 512MB.

Anyone got RAM for these things? It's a weird module with the ominous notation "Huxley Only." The 512MB module looks like a composite stacked module, almost like overgrown PowerBook 1400 RAM.

So wait, you're saying there are three disks in that tiny little thing? Wonders! Looks cool as hell though, can I have it?

Yep! Apparently it has three drive/battery bays (not sure if they can all be batteries -- I guess that would be dumb ). They're all populated with spinning rust. It's not tiny (14" screen), but it's much smaller than the specs would suggest. It's a bit poky in Solaris 10 compared to the Ultra-3, but it works well enough otherwise.

And no! You can't have it.

Running CDE or the Java desktop?

Java desktop. I like it better than CDE on Solaris.

Yeah, CDE is faster but it fails the like factor for most folks (don't tell zizban! ). I'm still huffing down the mwm koolaid from Motif 2.1.30 on my main workstation...

Different strokes for different folks, I suppose, but I never took to the Java Desktop. I could never shake the feeling that I was running just another Linux box. Not to be prejudiced against just another Linux box (I've happily used enough of them), but I want my commercial Unix systems to feel different, somehow, and CDE fits the bill, quirks and all.

PS. I remember the first time I saw a Tadpole. A vendor came to demo some software, and the sales engineer pulled out his tadpole. (That sounds sort of dirty, doesn't it?) He almost didn't get to do the demo, since all the technical people in the room were too busy ooooooh-ing and aaaaaah-ing over the laptop!

For things like Firefox and other gtk-based apps, do they still run okay under CDE? I imagine they would, I've just never tried. Java Desktop has enough little differences from regular GNOME that it feels unique, but, yeah, de gustibus non disputandum.

the sales engineer pulled out his tadpole.

No wonder we have such issues with women in STEM.

ClassicHasClass wrote: For things like Firefox and other gtk-based apps, do they still run okay under CDE? I imagine they would, I've just never tried. Java Desktop has enough little differences from regular GNOME that it feels unique, but, yeah, de gustibus non disputandum.

the sales engineer pulled out his tadpole.

No wonder we have such issues with women in STEM.

True dat...

And this...