The generic practice is ">b sd(,30,1)"; that seems to have worked in many cases. At issue is where on the disc Sun has placed the various architectures. There has been some 'net debate about this. I found this table, but cannot confirm it:
0 Mountable HSFS format 1 sun4 bootable image > b sd(,18,1) 2 sun4c bootable image > b sd(,30,3) 3 sun3x bootable image > b sd(,30,3) 4 sun3 bootable image > b sd(,30,6) [Information courtesy of MATSUMOTO Yutaka - Nihon Sun Engineer and Yaser Doleh]
Editor's Note: My own experience differs from this table, incidentally: my Sun 4/110 booted with b sd(0,30,1). Please clarify this if you can.
SunOS: What does "unrecognized mean at boot-time when using a third-party CD-ROM drive?
This is not really an error; SunOS 4.1.3 does not recognize CD-ROM drives which are not made by Hitachi or Sony or have a Sun PROM.
"If you've got the source of the SunOS CDROM device driver (sr.c), you could add a line to the sr_drivetypes[] array of structures and specify the Toshiba and its (SCSI) capabilities. "
[Information courtesy of Adrie Koolen]
Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but why does my AppleCD 300 work for booting and mounting?
The AppleCD 300 is an OEM Sony drive, just as the SunCD is. Consequently, it is the correct vendor (Sony) and it will respond to the MODE SELECT command from the system. Thus, when the Apple is brought on-line, it tells the system that it uses 2048 bytes/block, which generates an error, the system responds by telling the drive to switch to 512 bytes/block. Thus, you can mount and boot from an AppleCD. Contrast this to what happens with a NEC or Toshiba drive: the command is ignored, so it stays in the improper mode, causing the boot or mount to fail.
Disclaimer: It has been brought to my attention (via feedback from FAQ readers) that not all Sun PROM versions send the appropriate commands to set the block size on this drive. I do not recommend purchasing this drive unless you can try it first. It has been said to not work with an IPX or SS2 (which I am guessing would mean it doesn't work with anything older; ie. SS1, SS1+, IPC). Buyer beware!
What do I do if I have a bootable CD, but not a Sun compatible CD-ROM drive?
My Sun CD-ROM drive had stopped working. After failing to find a usable CD-ROM drive and not wanting to purchase another one, I came up with the following method. On a PC running Linux, I used the "dd" command to copy the entire Solaris 2.5.1 CD-ROM to a SCSI SyJet 1.5 disk (I assume a Jaz or other drive with enough space would probably work too). The command I used was similar to the following:dd if=/dev/scd0 of=/dev/sdb bs=51200With a fast CD-ROM drive (32X in my case), this only takes a few minutes. Note that it must be copied to the raw disk instead of a partition.Next, I connected the SyJet drive to my SS2 giving it SCSI ID 6 and issued the "boot cdrom" command. The install worked flawlessly and was faster than a CD-ROM install.
(Courtesy of Ken Robb)