The emulation of proper tape drive records is present in TME - see this fragment from the setup file that I have to install SunOS 2: ## power up the machine: ## # uncomment this line to automatically power up the machine when # tmesh starts: # command tape0 load sunos-2.0-sun2/tape1/01 sunos-2.0-sun2/tape1/02 sunos-2.0-sun2/tape1/03 sunos-2.0-sun2/tape1/04 sunos-2.0-sun2/tape1/05 sunos-2.0-sun2/tape1/06 sunos-2.0-sun2/tape1/07 sunos-2.0-sun2/tape1/08 sunos-2.0-sun2/tape1/09 sunos-2.0-sun2/tape1/10 command mainbus0 power up Let me know if you need more of a walkthrough, I'd have to get NetBSD running in a VM as I haven't worked with this in a long time, but I'm sure it still works. -Henry On Wed, 13 Mar 2024 at 18:04, wrote: > I had old instructions to do this but getting TME running was a bit > quirky. And the package had lost most of it’s support. > (I did just go out and find that some folks have somewhat resurrected it…) > > I have the install manual for 3.5 ( > http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/sun/sunos/3.5/800-2089-10A_Release_3.5_Manual_for_the_Sun_Workstation_198711.pdf > ) > And did find this about TME Now ( https://pkgsrc.se/wip/tme ) > And these instructions (which from the link before this page indicated as > of 2019 they still worked > http://people.csail.mit.edu/fredette/tme/sun3-150-nbsd.html ) > > That would get me “close” if I could somehow write to an emulated SCSI > device.. or the SD card that supported it… etc. Blue SCSI, Green SCSI, Pi > SCSI, etc. I don’t care which (would prefer something that would let me use > a “real” drive… SSD or similar is fine… rather than SD card). I do have an > image that gets me “somewhat” booting with a SCSI2SD but the additional > drive mounts are wrong in the fstab/mtab so I can’t get it fully to boot…. > > If I can figure out the process, I’ll make images and share them (for all > the early Sun OS’s) and write up a web page and post it to archive.org so > nobody has to go thru this again :-) > > Earl > > On Mar 13, 2024, at 5:56 PM, Henry Bent wrote: > > TME - most recently https://osdn.net/projects/nme/ - in theory does what > you want. Its setup and use is a bit idiosyncratic, and I have found that > it is unhappy running on OSs other than NetBSD, but if you get it running > it just works. I've used it to set up installations of SunOS 3 and 4 on > sun2, sun3, and sun4 architectures. > > -Henry > > On Wed, 13 Mar 2024 at 17:49, wrote: > >> I’m looking for a “Sun OS 3.5” emulation running where I can attach a >> SCSI emulator to it and get the full OS installed. >> I’ve got tape images but I haven’t found the process to emulate how it >> used to work. >> >> From the initial boot prompt, you extracted them to the “swap partition” >> and then started the install and it would prompt you for the next tape when >> needed. >> So, I guess we’d need an emulated tape or something, etc. I have all >> the tar’s (all the way back to Sun OS 1 or so) but have been frustrated >> trying to make some progress. >> >> Earl >> >> >> On Mar 13, 2024, at 5:31 PM, Henry Bent wrote: >> >> On Wed, 13 Mar 2024 at 17:27, Will Senn wrote: >> >>> On 3/13/24 3:12 PM, Henry Bent wrote: >>> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> I've been working quite a bit recently with SunOS 4 on a SPARCstation 5, >>> seeing what I can coax out of it in terms of building and supporting a >>> modern computing environment. I know that TUHS isn't really the right >>> place for this, but can someone point me to somewhere that is? I've made >>> significant progress in some areas and spent a lot of cycles to get there - >>> for instance, I have GCC 3.4.6 up and running - so I'd like to contribute >>> to a community if one exists. Is there a modern equivalent of sun-managers? >>> >>> -Henry >>> >>> Not an answer to the question, but on a tangent... >>> >>> I recently saw that Solaris 11.4 SRU66 was released and had a yearning >>> to see how things in Solaris land were doing (can't stand Gnome so >>> OpenIndiana's a bust)... but with Oracle's Solaris, it's a mess at least >>> for hobbyists (only get release patches, so I'm guessing the most up to >>> date 'release' was 11.4 in 2018). So, when I saw your post on SunOS 4, I >>> thought I'd tool around and see if it was easy to get rolling as a VM, >>> turns out things have come a long way on that front: >>> >>> https://defcon.no/sysadm/playing-with-sunos-4-1-4-on-qemu/ >>> >>> OpenWindows 3... wow... works great on my Mint instance. Now, if I could >>> just remember how commands work on SunOS :). >>> >> >> Thanks Will! You may also be interested in >> https://john-millikin.com/running-sunos-4-in-qemu-sparc as another >> resource about running SunOS 4 in QEMU. I have considered moving my setup >> to QEMU, especially as it would be very easy to create a hard drive image >> since I am using a SCSI2SD board, but there is something about running >> these things on the original hardware that is difficult to leave behind. >> >> -Henry >> >> >> >