[SunRescue] OPUS Systems SPARC-like PC-thingy

[Matthew Haas]

Good morning,

 I've come across a rather unique item in my PC encounters... because of
my love and appreciation for Sun and the SPARC platform, I recognized this
and saved it from inevitable doom (being used for scrap metal). The more I
look at it and muse about what it could be, the more I get ideas on what
I'd like to do with it... but a few big questions remain in my way, and
I'm hoping that someone on this list has at least come in contact with
such a thing, or knows where I could find out more about it.

 The device is actually an assemblage of 3 cards... stacked double (as far
as PC terms go)-- one plugs this thing in a PC motherboard... the top-most
card has a 16-bit ISA connector, bottommost has an 8-bit ISA connector.
The third card is dangling off the back of the bottommost card, connected
by a series of SBUS connectors, which form the connection between the
whole thing.

 The top-most card (with 16-bit ISA) is hosting a lot of the motherboard
features of a SPARC:

 QuickLogic pASIC QL12x16-OPL84C   (integrated circuit)
 STP2001QFP NCR 89C105          (integrated circuit with a Sun logo on it)
 NVRAM with a label of:

      132037
      Hostid 800203c5
      Ether 00:80:f1:02:03:c5

 PROM with a label of:
 
      LX-II 2.15a
      (c)1994 Sun Micro

 An SBUS connector suitable for an add-on SBUS card.

 On the outside edge of this card (facing out the back of the PC) are a
UTP connector, SCSI-2, and minidin-8

 The card has header pins for an AUI (in addition to the UTP), as well as
the usual Parallel, internal SCSI, and floppy connectors.

 What I thought was a little cool was the designation for the minidin
port... there are 5 groups of headers on this board, labelled:

  TTYB   AUDIO   MINI-DIN   KB/MS   TTYA

 There is a header cable, connecting from MINI-DIN to KB/MS, indicating
that in whatever configuration this device was last used, a Sun-compatible
keyboard was used on the Mini-Din-8 port.

 There is also a 3-pin jumper labelled "PC" and "SA"... it was set to
"PC"... which I'd gather to mean PC, and "SA" perhaps SPARC
Architecture... but that's just a guess.

 There are some red indicator LEDs at the top of the board.. one perhaps
indicating power (as in the external of a SPARC case) and then 4
indicating diagnostic LEDs. (labelled AT, SLOT, SCSI, and ENET).

 There's a selectable dip switch labelled I/O Addr.

 Company markings include:

 OPUS I70
 COPYRIGHT (c) OPUS 1994
 SBI PART 02000163

 That is by far the busiest card... the bottom-most card has the video,
containing an IC with "Bt" on it, like the one's I've seen on CGSixes and
the like. There are two VGA plugs.. one labelled "VGA IN" and "OUT"

 Company markings include:

 303-0037-001 REV A
 OPUS SYSTEMS 1992

 The other card contains the CPU and memory modules... 8 72-pin SIMM
slots, segmented off in pairs, and I got it with pairs of SIMMs in the
first and third banks.

 It has what appears to be a SPARC CPU with a mounted circular heatsink
(similar to the SPARC 10 type?) as well as a fan next to it, which also
seems Sun-issue to me.

 Company markings include:

 303-00043-003 REV A
 REV A (checked with an X) SN "PA-132039" (hand-written)

 And what I believe to be the OPUS logo (circle with 8 pie shaped wedges)
appear in various places on all the boards.

 This came out of a Pentium (or PPro)-based DELL or NEC desktop server. I
do not know anything else about it. 

 What I'd like to do, is take my trusty ol' 486 and run 2 PCs in one :)
(PC running Linux/i386, and the SPARC-card running something else...
perhaps NetBSD or OpenBSD, if the hardware is similar enough, otherwise
the SunOS or Solaris it was designed for). But that's just what I'd like
to do with it, I don't know if it can actually be done.

 So, if anyone has any idea of what this thing is, how to set it up and
use it, I'd greatly appreciate it. I've tried it in a PC... when I set it
for "SA" I seem to get the most activity, on "PC" it seems not to do
anything... I didn't have a decent monitor to get any confirmed results,
though.

 Thanks, and sorry for being so long...

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