an annoying update to the Sun Ray saga (please help)

forcing a firmware update to unlock the configuration GUI broke things...

welp. in the last installment of the Sun Ray saga, i mentioned the difficulty in finding newer firmware releases for these wonderful little guys. tl;dr: Sun Ray Server Software 5.3 onwards stopped shipping the device firmware, requiring a separate download - except the firmware downloads were locked behind an Oracle support contract. a few people told me “you’d really not be gaining much by using newer firmware than what you’ve got, don’t bother” - and for the most part, they’re right!

but here’s a story.

i forced a firmware downgrade on a couple of my Sun Ray 3+ clients (unfortunately, both at the same time…) to enable the on-device configuration GUI. (Sun Ray administrators have the option to disable it, but the current state of the configuration GUI enablement is baked into the device flash, and requires a firmware load to change - using a couple “key” files that ship with the Sun Ray firmware bundles).

after the firmware load, neither of them appeared to work anymore. no video output. i tried a bunch of different DVI cables, and DVI to HDMI adapters; i plugged one of them into the Kramer VP-771 scaler under my desk to see if it was detecting any video from the Sun Ray (which it wasn’t)…

in a fit of desperation i tried plugging one of them into a VGA monitor (with a DVI-I to VGA adapter). lo and behold, the OpenIndiana login screen appeared! yeah, it turns out that the firmware i do have (4.3_50_2011.04.22.22.07) seemingly has non-functional digital video output on the Sun Ray 3+ clients - so i do need to find an updated firmware release after all…

i managed to find Sun/Oracle document 1-79-1472062.1, which has the patch numbers & filenames for a couple much newer versions of the firmware:

i scoured archive.org; a bunch of FTP indexer sites; and a shady Russian torrent tracker, trying to find one of these archives… and came up empty-handed. so this is a call for help - if you happen to have a copy of a post-SRSS 5.3 release of the Sun Ray Operating Software, please reach out! i really want to have these Sun Ray 3+ clients actually operable again.