[rescue] Re: What to do with a 630mp?

[Robert Novak]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2001, BSD Bob the old greybeard BSD freak wrote:

> >   ...and if you put beefier CPUs in it, it's even better. :)  Five
> > bucks is a steal.
> 
> If, in the proper care and feeding of suntoyz.....(:+}}..., I wanted to
> feed it beefier beefcake cpus (gads!)..... what particular part numbers
> should I be looking for, 

Most CPUs for SS10/SS20 will work. You will need  PROM upgrades for the
later HyperSPARCs. My guess is you can start looking for SM51 or
thereabouts.

The sun part# list I have shows the following items for 600MP series:

   501-2258 - 40 MHz, SM41 superPARC module, SS10/630/670/690
   501-2270 - 40 MHz, SM41 superSPARC module, SS10/630/670/690
   501-2352 - 40 MHz, SM51 superSPARC module, SS10/630/670/690
   501-2359 - 40 MHz, SM41 superSUPER module, SS10/630/670/690/SC2000
   501-2360 - 50 MHz, SM51 superSPARC module, SS10/630/670/690/1000
   501-2361 - 50 MHz, SM51 superSPARC module, SS10/630/670/690
   501-2387 - 50 MHz, SM51 superSPARC module, SS10/630/670/690/1000
   501-2444 - 50 MHz, SM520 superSPARC module, SS630MP/670MP/690MP
   501-2445 - 50 MHz, SM521 superSPARC module, SS630MP/670MP/690MP
   501-2607 - 50 MHz, SM51 superSPARC module, SS10/10SX/20/630/670/690

There may be others that fgrep didn't catch, but those seem to be most of
the ones this system shipped with. 

You may be able to find some good deals on ebay for the 100-150MHz
Hypersparc processors, and I think they will work (although I don't have
any so I can't confirm this).

> and will it require ram speedups for the on-board ram?  I have zero
> info for this critter so am mostly shooting from the hip on it.  It
> seems to be full up on 4mb 30 pin ram sticks.  

The memory is what you're stuck with. You can upgrade to banks of 16 16MB
30pin simms, but I don't think anything faster than 70-80ns will do you
any good.

There are memory expansion boards (1-slot VME card with 64 30pin simms in
4 banks) that you can use 1-2 of in a VME enclosure. You can do banks of
1MB (officially unsupported but I've done it), 4MB, or 16MB simms, for a
maximum capacity of 2.5GB RAM (with 160 16MB simms) or 640MB (with 160 4MB
simms, probably cheaper and easier to find). 

> It has one cpu board with 6 heat sinks marked Ross on it, but the
> dmesg on boot indicated only a 4/600 cpu at 40mhz, so I am expecting
> it is one of the lesser cpu's.

It's the lessest for that board. The infamous SM100, in all likelihood.
There are worse CPUs (I have an SM20 around here somewhere) but you'll
find the SM100 is a pretty doggish cpu. No L2 cache, about similar to a
SS2 (some say slower). Also, it's not supported in newer Solaris, although
certainly NetBSD/OpenBSD won't drop it yet (?).

If you can get an SM40/41/50/51 you'll find it's better for a start, until
you get your quad 125s :-)

--Rob


Robert Novak, Indyramp Consulting * rnovak at indyramp.com * indyramp.com/~rnovak
        "And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
           Maybe this year will be better than the last...." -- counting crows