[SunRescue] SparcStation Voyager Serial Port Strangeness

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

I just picked up a super clean Voyager with the color LCD panel-- cool
machine.  This particular machine has a few interesting quirks.  It's PRO=
M
reports that it is a "pre-release XTerm prom, not for a production system=
". =

It also has no hard disk.  Where the disk should be is a odd 2.5" by 3/8 =
inch
double-daughter card sort of thing-- I have no idea what that puppy is.  =


I booted it on Solaris 7 from an external disk and it comes up jus' fine.=

The Voyager has a single serial port and a PCMCIA carrier for two cards. =
 I
noticed that the serial port does not initialize properly.  You can "see"=
 it
from Solaris, but it won't connect to anything.  The same is true if you =
plug
a modem card into the PCMCIA slot-- Solaris says it's there, but you can'=
t
read the modem config or connect through it.

I figured that maybe hardware support for the unique parts of this beasti=
e
were discontinued by the time Solaris 7 came along, so I booted it off of=
 a
Solaris 2.6 disk (the oldest verion I have lying around) and got the same=

results.  I tried to boot OpenBSD 2.6, but it panics and dies.

I put an RS232 monitor on the serial port and if I'm just sitting at an O=
K
prompt in the PROM, the monotor shows the correct status lights lit.  Whe=
n
Solaris begins to boot, ALL the status lights go out-- it's like it cease=
s to
be a port at all.

Are there any Voyager owners out there?  What OS are you running and how =
are
your serial ports?

P.S. Anyone got any leads on the proprietary memory chips the Voyager use=
s? =

Running X on a 60 MHz machine with 16 MB of RAM is a character-building
experience.

___________________________________________________________________ =

---- Harry J. Regan
---- Phone: 202.310.2719
---- FAX:   212.202.3923
---- harry.regan at usa.net =




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