It turns out after all this work finding a new hard drive for the sparcstation2, that the battery has died and it wont retain any of its settings. The machine is old, very old... it might be its time to be retired. I don't think I want to spend the 20$ on a new battery, its not about being cheap its about knowing when to let something go.
We will need to find something else to do backup mail and DNS for sdf1.net