Using a PC as a Sun 'Shoebox'

[Heinz Naef]

Hello creative system integrators,

This crazy question may have been asked before, but ...

I'm wondering if a so-called industry-standard personal computer could be
configured so that it acts as a 'shoebox' for a diskless Sun workstation.

The question came up because two collegues and I own PC's for home usage,
equipped with a large (unfortunately MFM) harddisk (130MB) and a Sun-
compatible streamer tape drive. We are thinking about buying a real
workstation but do not want to throw away what we have now.

One could imagine a package containing a SCSI host adapter for the PC bus
and a special DOS device driver or PC-bootable mini-operating system which
could emulate the 'intelligence' of the 'shoebox'.

Does anyone know about such a beast; or is it really a bad idea?  Thanks
in advance for any comments (consider the limited bandwith of the News
system).  This question has nothing to do with any design ideas my
employer may have.

Heinz Naef, CIBA-GEIGY AG, R-1045.3.37, P.O.Box, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland
 E-mail: whna at ciba-geigy.ch - Phone: +41 61 697 2675 - Fax: +41 61 697 3288