I have a couple of Solaris 8 boxes. I want to begin using the
operating system. Where can I find some beginner/layman explaination
information for doing things.i.e. cleaning the harddrives, loading the
file systems,essentials.

When dealing with a big company like Sun (the authors of the Solaris
operating system), I find it is best to go to the source to find the
information you need.  In this case, Sun has lots of documentation on
their site at:

http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/Software/Solaris_on_Sun_Hardware/Solaris_8/

Seems like the closes thing there to a reference manual is titled:

Solaris on Sun Hardware Reference Manual Supplement

Not much help there.  After doing a search on Google for "Solaris 8"
"basic commands", I found this gem, published by Sun which will
probably help you out:

Solaris 8 System Administrator's Guide
http://www.sun.com/books/catalog/winsor11/index_Preface.html

This 3rd edition was just published last May so it shouldn't be out of
date.

I am assuming you know unix fairly well, are a sysadmin for one or
more other flavours, and just need some help getting your head around
Solaris' peculiarities, and some pointers .

I cannot recommend the "Unix System Administration Handbook" (Evi
Nemeth et al) highly enough. It is not purely Solaris based, but if
you are to be doing unix admin, you should probably have this book -
prettymuch all admins I have ever worked with have either had this
book, or stolen mine.

You might also want to get the O'Reilly armadillo book ("Essential
System Administration"), but for once, I have to say that o'Reilly
only comes out second best.

The following are useful bookmarks that I've accumulated over the
years doing solaris admin.

You will find the "rosetta stone" page ( http://bhami.com/rosetta.html
) ridiculously useful, if you are used to any other versions of unix.
You will refer to it regularly, so bookmark it.

Beyond that, your first stop should be man pages: if your system does
not have them installed, you can find them (for most versions of unix)
in these three places:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?manpath=v7
http://www.iainp.co.uk/ibm/morehandy.html
http://www.freebsd.org/docs.html

If you have Sun-specific issues, then some good resources are:
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/faq/index.html - a bunch of sun-related
FAQs.

http://www.sunfreeware.com/ - THE place for precompiled packages.
Check for mirrors in your area: there are lots. If you need any open
source/freeware/pd/shareware software for solaris, this is by far the
easiest way to get it. Kindof your "download.com" for solaris.

http://www.ugu.com/ is also worth a look, though not solaris based -
visit it when you're bored.

If you can connect to IRC, I find the efnet #solaris to be
considerably more helpful and knowledgeable than any other network.
This is a good place to go with a question when all your google and
FAQ searches have drawn a blank.

If you're a beginner, you might find the following command list
useful:
http://www.iainp.co.uk/ibm/morehandy.html
Even if you're not a beginner, there are some commands there that even
a lot of solaris admins I've met are surprised about.

Beside all that, I can't recommend any specific documents. Each
problem will be an adventure in itself, and the solution to it will be
in a separate place. There seems to be no central repository for HOWTO
docs like the Linux Documentation Project. The bigadmin site is the
closest.

Good luck.

Really you use wrong site. All Sun documentation is on:

docs.sun.com

If you want to install only. You can use "Solaris 8 (SPARC Platform
Edition) Installation Guide
":

http://docs.sun.com/db/doc/806-0955

If you want to understand Solaris you may  read :
System Administration Guide, Volume 1
System Administration Guide, Volume 2
System Administration Guide, Volume 3

from

http://docs.sun.com/db/coll/47.11

You can also purchase a good Solaris 8 command reference here:

http://vig.pearsoned.com/store/product/1,3498,store-6404_isbn-0130277010,00.html

Are you looking for a book or a maybe a computer based training
solution?  The CBT's aren't difficult and you'll get what u need.

A good link to learn Unix is this: http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/usail/
I can send some links for free web tutorials, if that's help any,
also.