[Westwales] help!

[John Bailey]

> hello there. i've got my sparc 4 box, and well its just a box as it uses an
> interesing interface for VGA and keyboard i cant talk to it via convensional
> means,

I'd presume it's got a 13W3 interface - you can get a 13W3->VGA converter
(ebay, unixnerd.demon.co.uk) that'll allow you to plug a decent VGA
monitor in. (note here, I tried plugging a naff 14" VGA monitor into mine
and it wouldn't give me a display - I presume that it couldn't cope with
the refresh rates as a more recent monitor worked no problem).  As for the
keyboard, you can get these off e-bay for about 10 quid (including a
mouse) (ex p&p) if you shop around.

> also i dont know anything about its domain or ip address. is there
> any legal tools out there that i can use to basically find out over TCP

I'd suggest 'nmap' <http://www.insecure.org/nmap/>.  It's a good tool and
there's plenty of documentation.

> i also have a feeling that the idea of ip scanning or port sniffing is
> illegal?

AFAIK, not currently, at least not in this country.  IP scanning machines
that don't beling to you is considered a little hostile, though.

Good luck,

John