HI all, Does anyone know how to load solaris9 (downloaded images burned to cd.) onto a sun ultra5 that has linux mandrake installed on it. This is on a 9.1 Seagate harddrive internal IDE. I don't have all the information on the drive in order to format it. Is there another way around this, or a way to get this information about the drive that the solaris format commands seem to need. I have another thought, I could pull the drive and then put it into my PC, "fdisk /mbr" from a Windows 98/ME floppy. What I might do after that????, I don't know. NEXT At the ok prompt I type boot cdrom Then go thru the normal screens. After selecting English "1" to run the Installer I get a console screen At the bottom of the console pane it ask's me, "would you like to re-partition a disk A[y,n,?,q] I pick "y" NEXT a bunch of information about creating a temp slice. "Do you want to re-partition /dev/dsk/c0t0d0 [y,n,?,q] I pick "y" NEXT Enter a swap slice size between 478MB and 8961MB, default = 512MB [?] I put in a value of 5000, didn't know what to put here. NEXT "Can the swap slice start at the beginning of the disk." I pick "y" NEXT "Disk Slice : /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 Size : 5000MB Start Cyl : 0" "Is this OK?" I pick "y" Now here is the problem, the whole thing just starts all over again, There is no re-partitioning. I just go back to the beginning screen. No errors, no messages. Am I doing something wrong? Is this a bug? Please Help. Thanks ahead of time.

Looks to me like you have Linux Partitions and not enough room for solaris. Number 1, You cannot dualboot on a Sparc machine, and no... Format /mbr will NOT work because that's made for an INTEL platform which works totally Different than SParc. What you can do is: repartition with FDISK in teh solaris Installation disk. This can be done when you reach the Disk partitioning part where you choose your drive. Select your drive and then select: Edit with FDISK. Change all the partitions to: unused Then change the first one to SOlaris and select teh full length of teh drive... Then continue on to the slice customization.

the above was from s perspn from another site, however this did not work. Does anyone know how reformat the drive and or install a Maxtor 30 gig? or something. any suggestions would be welcom. thanks again for all the help.

For all those who needed this information, I've found it. Seagate ST39140A IDE ST39140A MEDALIST PRO 9140 ST-39140A (Medalist Pro 9140 Ultra ATA-4) /===========\ | REAR VIEW | \===========/ J2 40 pin I/O Cable Connection | | J5 /========= ==========G======A=/---------\ TOP (HDA) =|::::::::::.::::::::1| :-: :-: | 0 0 0 0 |== \==========|==========H|=|=|=|=\-5-G-G-12/ BOTTOM | | | | | pin-20 removed -/ | | | \-- Alternate Capacity (see below) | | | (spare jumpers stored on pins A-C) | | | and pins E-G) | | \---- Remote LED (C-, D+) | \------ Cable Select (when Slave OFF) \-------- Master ON, Slave OFF Alternate Capacity jumper sets the default cylinder translation to 4092 to solve issues with certain BIOS that only auto-detect. Total available sectors are still at full capacity as reported via Identify Drive data words 52 - 61. Third party partitioning software may be needed to achieve full capacity if this option jumper is used. ST-39140A Medalist Pro 9140 AT FORMATTED CAPACITY (MB) __________________9115.3 ACTUATOR TYPE ____________________________VOICE COIL CYLINDERS __PHYSICAL______________________9006 HEADS ______PHYSICAL______________________8 DISCS (3.5 in) ___________________________4 MEDIA TYPE _______________________________THIN FILM HEAD TYPE ________________________________MR RECORDING METHOD _________________________ZBR EPRML (16/17) INTERNAL TRANSFER RATE (Mbits/sec) _______up to 193.88 EXTERNAL TRANSFER RATE (Mbytes/sec) ______up to 33.3 PIO/DMA/UDMA MODE (max) __________________4/2/2 DMA SUPPORT ______________________________EISA Type B SPINDLE SPEED (RPM) ______________________7200 AVERAGE LATENCY (mSEC) ___________________4.16 BUFFER ___________________________________512K Read/Write Multiple, Read Look-Ahead, Multi-Segmented INTERFACE ________________________________Ultra ATA-4 SECTORS PER DRIVE (LBA mode) _____________17,803,440 TPI (TRACKS PER INCH) ____________________9570 BPI (KBITS PER INCH) _____________________179.2 AVERAGE ACCESS (ms seek/read/write) ______/9.5/10.0 SINGLE TRACK SEEK (ms seek/read/write) ___2.0/2.5/3.5 MAX FULL SEEK (ms seek/read/write) _______21.0/22.0/23.5 MTBF (power-on hours) Office _____________400,000 SHOCK (G's, 11/2 ms): operating (Read/Write) __________10 abnormal ________________________ nonoperating ____________________/200 ACOUSTICS (Bels typ/max) _________________3.9/4.7 POWER DISSIPATION (watts) ________________ POWER REQUIREMENTS: +12V START-UP (amps) _2.5 POWER MANAGEMENT (Watts): ACTIVE _______________13.0 IDLE _________________11.0 STANDBY ______________3.0 WRITE PRECOMP (cyl) ______________________N/A REDUCED WRITE CURRENT (cyl) ______________N/A LANDING ZONE (cyl) _______________________AUTO IBM AT DRIVE TYPE ________________________* Physical: Height (inches/mm): 1.027/26.09 Width (inches/mm): 4.023/101.9 Depth (inches/mm): 5.787/146.99 Weight (lbs/g): 1.5/680 * MAY REQUIRE FORMATTING AND PARTITIONING SOFTWARE. ALSO, CHECK TO SEE IF YOUR CMOS SETUP HAS A "CUSTOM" OR "USER DEFINABLE" DRIVE TYPE AVAILABLE. (see below) Possible Capacity Limited CHS translations: This translation is generally acceptable, as is, for non-DOS operating systems: 16,383 cyl, 16 heads, 63 sectors = 8,455,200,780 DOS operating systems may require a translation that uses larger values for the CMOS head parameter which lowers cylinders below 1024: 1023 cyl, 256 heads, 63 sectors = 8,447,459,328 Other FULL-CAPACITY solutions for DOS operating systems include third-party drive preparation software, system BIOS which supports LBA mode or bios driven host adapters. Otherwise, capacity may be limited to: 1024 cyl, 16 heads, 63 sectors = 528,482,304 Some systems BIOS have capacity limitations. Types that have been identified are: a 2.113GB or 4095 cylinder limitation a 3.262GB or 6322 cylinder limitation a 4.22GB or 8192 cylinder limitation a 8.45GB Standard INT13 limitation (CHS[1024x256x63]x512) and, if exceeded, may cause the system to hang during boot, capacity reduction or it can truncate or wrap the cylinders when auto-detect options set in the CMOS. FAT16 based operating systems are also limited to 8.4GB. New INT13 Extensions in BIOS and FAT32 based operating systems are both required to acheive full capacity. DOS 16-bit FAT file system cannot access more than 2.147 Gbytes per partition. FAT32 file system can create single partitions and logical drives up to 2TB. Note: A "custom" or "user-defined" CMOS drivetype may ask for a numerical value for the Write Precompensation cylinder and for the Landing Zone cylinder. A basic rule-of-thumb for drive models that do not require the old Write Precomp technique or a Landing Zone because they are Auto-Parking is to add 1 to the cylinder value being used. As an example: If cylinders equaled 820, then both Write Precomp and Landing Zone would be entered as 821. Some BIOS will convert this to 65535 or -1, which are functionally equivalent to "none (not used)". Already low-level formatted at the factory. Since a User-definable or Custom translation geometry may be used, it is imperative that the values be written down and kept with your permanent records for retrieval in the event of CMOS battery failure.