Sunfire and LOM

My sunfire decided not to boot one day. The problem was I couldn't diagnose the problem as the only way to get to the output is through the console (or hyperterminals). The funny part was that I had left the RJ45-DB25 adapter in India over the last vacations. So my sister had to parcel it. After struggling with the LOM prompt (1 hr of research to find the esc character) and playing with the various options, I found how to get to the OK> prompt. Tried to load the kernel from a CD but it simply hangs. Looks like as if the harddisk itself has gone bad. I will try to buy an off the shelf IDE harddisk and will try to install solaris on it. I am not sure if any jumper configuration would need to be changed. I had pretty much everything stored in my beloved machine and am not sure if I would be able to salvage the disk.