I've never had any experience with Debian, and therefore don't know how much help I can be to you. Are you sure that "boot cd" is a valid command? When I install RedHat, for example, I just set the BIOS up to run from the cd, as the disks are bootable.

Perhaps you have to mount the cd first? (e.g. mount /dev/cdrom) ??

I'm unfortunately in a lot of pain right now (just had major surgery on Tuesday) but I'll check around for you on Debian installs, and get back to ya within a day or so. Good luck in the mean time!

Well, I don't have that much experience with SPARC computer, but I think it would be the same.

First of all, are you 100% sure the cd is good? If you downloaded it, does the MD5 hash agree with one from a good copy (this will often be on the website).

Secondly, is the cd bootable? Sometimes, believe it or not, OS cd's arent bootable.

Thirdly, did you download the right operating system for your platform?

Finally, try making boot disks. I've seen cases where some computers just can't boot off certain cds, for whatever reason.

Hope this helps...

many thanks to everyone.

Problem turned out to need a lot of effort from an expert, but finally got solved.

thank you all for taking the time to reply.

OK, cool

A question actually - after all was said and done, it was possible, right? My only experience on a SparcStation has been with Sun Solaris at Hofstra's computer labs