Help Needed with Sun3 Shoebox on Sun2

[Bill_von_Hagen at transarc.com]

I'm having a lot of problems reading tapes (and therefore booting) my
system, and hoped that someone could tell me what's going on, or at least
explain the error messages I'm getting.

My system is an 8-meg Sun 2/50 attached to a Sun3 (I think) shoebox
containing a Toshiba MK 156 disk and a Wangtek 5099EN24 tape drive.  The
2/50 passes all of its disgnostics with no problem, yet when I fire up the
shoebox and try to boot from tape ("b st()"), the tape drive grinds for a
while, but eventually returns the message "st: sense error".  The tapes
are QIC-11 3.5 boot tapes for a 68010, so I believe that what's on them is
correct.  I also have another Wangtek drive and SYSGEN board stuffed,
frankenstein-fashion, into an old PC drive box.  When I shut down the
shoebox, hook up the latter, and try to boot, I get the error message "st:
error 96A0".  Help!  HELP!!

I can't find anywhere in the standard doc set that explains these
messages, and the 2/50 technical docs that I have don't discuss these
types of errors.  I'd really appreciate any help anyone could give me.
Right now I have a lot of useless hardware.  How useful it will be when I
get it running is debatable, but I'd at least like to get it running!!!

Another, related, question - do I have to terminate the SCSI out on the
showbox, or is that handled internally?

Thanks very much!

    Bill (wvh at transarc.com)