18 Feb
2026
18 Feb
'26
6:48 p.m.
Hi,
did anyone ever create an image of the Sun 386i firmware (EP)ROM?
There was a discussion on cctalk two years ago, but it seems the ROM was not dumped back
then.
https://marc.info/?l=classiccmp&m=171014099801502
The firmware dump would obviously be very useful to write an emulator for the 386i.
Our department here at Bamberg Uni bought four 386i machines back in 1989 as their first
workstations for a whooping 230k German Marks. It would be nice to be able to show a
running
machine or an emulation at our upcoming anniversary (the department itself was only
founded
25 years ago, but the 386i machines were purchased more than a decade before that date by
the people who later founded the department), but none of the 386i machines here have
survived..
So if someone has a 386i for sale (ideally in Europe, I'm in Germany) I'm also
interested...
Best,
Michael
18 Feb
18 Feb
8:18 p.m.
did anyone ever create an image of the Sun 386i
firmware (EP)ROM?
I'll try to dump it this weekend. Do not hesitate to poke me early next
week if you don't hear back.
So if someone has a 386i for sale (ideally in Europe,
I'm in Germany) I'm also interested...
There's a guy near Paris, who used to maintain a bunch of 386i for a
large company, until they were eventually replaced, not that many years
ago (they were used with in-house ISA boards, and the company wanted to
use an Unix-like operating system on the machines driving these boards,
at a time where neither Linux nor Solaris on Intel were a thing). To the
best of my knowledge he still has four of them:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/186791746118
Miod
9:16 p.m.
On 18. Feb 2026, at 21:18, Miod Vallat via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Great, thanks a lot!
I had a closer look at the 386i SunOS 4.0.2 kernel. Strangely, the kernel and
userland use COFF instead of a.out and, even more unexpected, llvm-objdump
and llvm-nm on OS X are able to disassemble the binaries and extract the symbols...
this could be a fun project :).
did anyone ever create an image of the Sun 386i
firmware (EP)ROM?
I'll try to dump it this weekend. Do not hesitate to poke me early next
week if you don't hear back. So if someone
has a 386i for sale (ideally in Europe, I'm in Germany) I'm also interested...
There's a guy near Paris, who used to maintain a bunch of 386i for a
large company, until they were eventually replaced, not that many years
ago (they were used with in-house ISA boards, and the company wanted to
use an Unix-like operating system on the machines driving these boards,
at a time where neither Linux nor Solaris on Intel were a thing). To the
best of my knowledge he still has four of them:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/186791746118 
11:03 p.m.
Yeah, sure, but why?
The Sun386i can come up with a dead timekeeper memory, but you then need
to put in the appropriate values in the boot loader if I recall.
I just refreshed two out of the three 386i's I have; both have 2 aaa
battery holders soldered into the timekeeper chips um.... 30 years ago I
guess and both were working fine last year with new batteries, a reboot
and a kick in the pants in BIOS. Two of the power supplies were dead;
both in the 12 volt "snooper" circuits from the 120/240 volt input. I
just backwired in a 100-300v to 12v supply and everything works all nice
and happy.
It's a nice machine, and both my CG3 and CG5 (yep, the roadrunner) still
work. Didn't get to trying the SunVGA board but it did boot and
everything was there from the 1990's days when I ran them as
CrystelCom's main internet router and DNS/SMTP servers.
If anyone's figured out how to get a Cyrix accelerator CPU running I'm
all attention.
C
On 2/18/26 15:18, Miod Vallat via cctalk wrote:
did anyone
ever create an image of the Sun 386i firmware (EP)ROM?
I'll try to dump it this
weekend. Do not hesitate to poke me early next
week if you don't hear back.
So if someone has a 386i for sale (ideally in
Europe, I'm in Germany) I'm also interested...
There's a guy near
Paris, who used to maintain a bunch of 386i for a
large company, until they were eventually replaced, not that many years
ago (they were used with in-house ISA boards, and the company wanted to
use an Unix-like operating system on the machines driving these boards,
at a time where neither Linux nor Solaris on Intel were a thing). To the
best of my knowledge he still has four of them:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/186791746118
Miod 
10:57 a.m.
Hi Walter,
thanks - I found these files myself, too, but theese seem to be dumps of the NVRAM only,
not the firmware ROM.
Best, Michael
On 19. Feb 2026, at 11:29, Walter Belgers via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Hi,
On 18 Feb 2026, at 19:48, Michael Engel via
cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org>> wrote:
did anyone ever create an image of the Sun 386i firmware (EP)ROM?
I found them in my collection.
Regards,
Walter.

11:54 a.m.
You need a sun386i BIOS chip then?
On 2/19/26 05:57, Michael Engel via cctalk wrote:
Hi Walter,
thanks - I found these files myself, too, but theese seem to be dumps of the NVRAM only,
not the firmware ROM.
Best, Michael
On 19. Feb 2026, at 11:29, Walter Belgers via
cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Hi,
On 18 Feb 2026, at 19:48, Michael Engel via
cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org>> wrote:
did anyone ever create an image of the Sun 386i firmware (EP)ROM?
I found them in
my collection.
Regards,
Walter.

11:57 a.m.
Hi Chris,
not necessarily the physical chip, but I would love to have the image of the BIOS chip in
order to write a 386i emulator.
Best, Michael
On 19. Feb 2026, at 12:54, Chris Zach via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
You need a sun386i BIOS chip then?
On 2/19/26 05:57, Michael Engel via cctalk wrote:
> Hi Walter,
>
> thanks - I found these files myself, too, but theese seem to be dumps of the NVRAM
only, not the firmware ROM.
>
> Best, Michael
>
>> On 19. Feb 2026, at 11:29, Walter Belgers via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>>> On 18 Feb 2026, at 19:48, Michael Engel via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
<mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org>> wrote:
>>> did anyone ever create an image of the Sun 386i firmware (EP)ROM?
>> I found them in my collection.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Walter.
>>
>> 
>
0
days inactive
1
days old
8 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
Chris Zach -
Michael Engel -
Miod Vallat -
Walter Belgers