I'm doing this in text format, because if I took the time to do this in HTML,
I'd scream.

getting solaris to run on my hardware was a truely hideous experience. 
In all fairness, this was more than partly due to the fact that I have a
broken SCSI card, that doesn't have the "AutoSCSI" boot-time configuration
menu working.

In other words, I have a scsi card with no jumpers, AND no OTHER way to change
its configuration either.

Sometimes, solaris saw the card. Sometimes, it didn't. Mostly, it didn't when
I had my soundblaster VIBRA16 card in. 

I decided to use the "DU2" driver upgrade. But unbeknown to me.. that made
things WORSE!

The Device Assistant would see EITHER the SCSI, OR the soundblaster, depending
on which was plugged in. Or if both were plugged in, it would only recognize
the SCSI... but then wouldn't let me USE it when I booted solaris anyways.
A real pain when I had just finished adding a nice external 4-gig drive for
use with solaris

[I also went back and forth between M$win95 and solaris, because
 that has a little better diagnostics, and also let me alter the
 configuration on my etherexpress]

After a few evenings of this lunacy, I finally did a clean install of solaris,
original unpatched 2.6, with the soundblaster OUT.

solaris Device assistant recognized my intel etherexpress, and my SCSI card.
I waited in hushed anticipation... and it WORKED!

I plugged my soundblaster card in... and the system still worked!
It still saw my SCSI, and still used the ethernet!

But it didn't see the soundcard.

It wasn't until I found the sample sbpro.conf card, that I finally got it
to work.
Note that I don't think I used the device assistant. I did a lot of

"modload sbpro"

until it quit giving me "driver did not attach" errors.
Then I did a reconfigure boot, and /dev/audio was finally set up correctly as
well.
I now have a reasonably working system.
(But for how long...?)