Re(2): [SunRescue] 4/6xx capabilities?

[James Lockwood]

On Tue, 11 Jan 2000, BSD Bob wrote:

> My thought was to update the deskside with more horsepower and better
> drive systems than the 3/160 can support, easily.  The idea is to mount
> everything internally rather than hang it all over the computer pit,
> as is normally done.   That deskside has all the power and power plugs
> for plenty of drives, etc., already there.  Just a better scsi fanout
> with less cabling than the early scsi2 or scsi3 stuff is needed.
> The later boards should do that well.

I agree with the earlier comment that you should just install another SCSI
connector in the rear of the drive bay and run a short external cable.
This is how the 630 and the 670 did it, after all.

> OK.  Do plain old PeeCee 9 pin style sims work, or do I need Sun simms?
> Do Apple box simms work?  Our local used Sun man had several of
> them he was yanking memory out of... I would suppose that is a good
> sign it possibly does?   Apples around here go for two bucks each in
> suplus, quite often, and have memory simms in them most of the time.
> I am not sure of the speed of the simms, though.  Some of them may
> be that fast.

They must be parity.  Older PC SIMMs should be fine.  Most Apple SIMMs are
nonparity (8 or 2 chip) and will not work.

> Are there any gotchas in the bus jumper settings in an old style 12 slot
> deskside chassis that I would need to be aware of?  If it is the only
> card, then I could isolate everything by pulling jumpers, I suppose.
> Effectively, it sounds like it would be the only card.
> 
> Now, I guess the question is.... anyone got a spare board they don't need
> that won't break piggy?  I have no real idea of what they should go for.

Given that SS5's and SS10's are getting really cheap, I personally
wouldn't pay more than $100 for a bare one, and even that might be pushing
it.  Many 600's have really old PROM revisions that prevent them from
working with modern CPU's.  Old CPU modules (SM100's) are incredibly slow,
you want to go with SuperSparc(s) if at all possible.

I actually saw a pair of SM100's go for $157 on Ebay to some idiot buyer.
I can get a few hundred at $1.50/ea if anyone has fewer scruples than I
do.

> And a second question.... will this board run NetBSD sun3 (since it does
> not really use VME scsi, which is what is driving me nutso on the other
> old machines I have .... NetBSD just won't go well on sun2/sun3 scsi
> controllers in my hands).  SunOS is nice, but I need a few of the fixes
> of later BSD's.  Me and Solaris, won't work well.

It is a Sparc, so it will run NetBSD/sparc.  The SCSI controller is an esp
unit identical to the ones in some of the pizzabox Sparcstations and those
are well supported.

> Does the thing use those silly abominable battery NVRAM chips?
> Those things are a plague.

Yes, all Sparcs do.  Easy to replace though, and I've had very few die on
me.  If you're really paranoid then just cut the leads to the battery when
it dies and mount an external lithium cell.

> Is there a diagram of the board (like the FEH things in the
> toast Sun4cHandBook site, so I could see what the thing is,
> or is there an on-line image of it anywhere?
> 
> What specific card part/board numbers do I need to look out for?

501-1686 and 501-2055.  -2055 has the FAS101 Fast SCSI-II controller
(10MB/sec), -1686 has the older 53C96 (5MB/sec sync SCSI-II).

-James