[geeks] Seeking a laptop scsi disk...

[wa2egp at att.net]

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Geoffrey S. Mendelson" <gsm at mendelson.com>
> On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 11:37:20AM -0500, der Mouse wrote:
> > I've got a SPARCstation Voyager.  It's fine, except that the disk is
> > only 773 megs (that's as reported in dmesg at boot time), which I find
> > rather cramping.  Trouble is, it takes a laptop SCSI disk, which is a
> > rather rare item.  I don't suppose anyone has one looking for a home?
> 
> They were both rare and expensive. The largest made were 1.2 gigabytes.
> The 3GX, which I think was later than the Voyager came with either the 1.2g
> drives or 2g drives in a little removable box.
> 
> The ones shipped with 2 gig drives had a scsi to ide adaptor and an IDE drive 
> in the box. 
> 
> The adaptors were expensive, still as much as $150 on eBay a year ago.
> 
> There are two kind, one is limited to 8g, the other limited to 120g.
> 
> If you are running Solaris on it, it may be limited to 2g depending upon
> the release you have for it. 
> 
> I don't know if the 3GX patches will support the Voyager too. The 2.6 patches
> were downloadable and can be easily found. Solaris 7 was sold (for $500)
> for the 3GX, it may also work on the Voyager. The problem is that the free
> version of 7 does not support the laptops and the patches were never released
> to the public. 

I don't think you need those patches.  The Voyager takes Solaris 7 max IIRC
and runs off the regular OS without any patches.  The Voyager is not a laptop
but a "transportable" if you got the muscle. :)

> 
> I have never been able to find a copy of it, except for the occasional
> copy for sale on eBay for far more than I can afford. 
> 
> A year ago, I tried to install various xBSD versions on my 3GX and none
> of them supported the hardware that I had. By now it may work, new releases
> were "in the works".
> 
> Bear in mind that although they had excelent screens and good keyboards,
> they are awfully slow by modern standards, limited in RAM, and have very
> short battery life.

I'm in not that much of a hurry. :)  Plus the Voyager is just a cool looking
machine!

Bob