[SunRescue] OPUS Systems SPARC-like PC-thingy

Thu Jun 22 14:16:49 CDT 2000

Yo!

You have stumble onto a SPARCard from OPUS system...

The card is a clone of a SPARCstation, dont really know which model. Its
suppose to clone.. But it sounds like it has some kind of sun4m CPU to
me. The card was btw designed for Solaris 1.1 (thats SunOS 4.1.3 or SunOS
4.1.3C).

Anyway, this card was placed on a "ordinary" PC motherboard, thus creating a
dual PC/Sparc computer, and its my guess that they accessed the UNIX system
from the PC..

You can always take a look on: 

http://www.sparc.org/flash/94-03.html

        //Magnus Abrante
/* This is not the opinion of my company, its just my own */

>  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...
> 
>   ----|||-------------------------------------------------------------   
>  -    |||       Atari 8-bit!  Star Wars * SPARCbook 3GX * SUMMER!!    -
> -     |||      400/800/XL/XE  Battlestar: Galactica * SPARC * Linux    -
> - |  | | |  | 2600/5200/7800  StarRaiders * StarTrek * Galaga * SCSI   -
>  - ||  |  ||     Lynx/Jaguar  NetBSD 1.4.2 * Descent * Voltron * UNIX -
>   --------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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