Netra T1 Automated Installation?

Question

Hi all,
I'm going to preface this with the fact that I've never worked on a sun system before (and hopefully you'll be kind about my complete lack of knowledge.)
I've just "liberated" an old sun netra t1 (500mhz 1gb ram 2x 18.1 gb disks) from my friend's basement. What it was doing down there, neither of us had a clue, but it seemed like a good machine to put to some use.
Problem. It has no video card or any way for me to communicate with the device. I'd like to do a fresh install of solaris 10 on the machine, but lacking an easy way to install it, I was wondering if there was a way to automate an install so that I can just pop in the cds (it does have a cd drive) let it run, and then access it somehow over the network (ssh?).
I've been reading online and some places have noted that I could potentially use a sun serial cable to do this, is that accurate?
Well, those are my questions for now. :)
Thanks!
Justin
Message was edited by:
justinoh
Spelling error. Opsie. :)

Answer 1

1. ) this db25-rj45 cable.... are there different
configurations of it? I've been looking on ebay and
the sun variants seem to run about 20 dollars and the
cisco ones are like 5 dollars. The CISCO console cable 72-3383-01 has the same pinout as per the Table 6-3 Pin Cross-overs for a DB9 Adapter section of the Netra t1 User And Administration Guide ( http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/pdf/806-4707-10.pdf ). i.e. allows direction connection from Netra RJ45 console port to a PC serial port.
>
2. ) Presumably once I have this cable then I will
need some sort of terminal application to access the
server, yes? I have a laptop running vista (cringe)
and ubuntu linux ... any suggestions for something I
could use on one of these oses?
I think any terminal emulator type should be sufficient to run the Solaris text installer over the Netra console port. The installer asks which terminal type (e.g. VT100) is in use (can't remember the supported terminal types).
Hope that helps