[SPARCbook] RE: RDI Ultrabook I AC adapter and battery

[Super-User]

scott.archer at vaisala.com wrote:

> [Scott]
> Hi Peter -
> Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours..
The same to you Scott!


> ref the AC adapter and battery
> 1. I checked the RDI 170\200 Ultrabook hw reference guide and it states
> that the factory-shipped AC adapter also provides concurrent battery
> charging when the battery is installed. The lithium-ion battery that came
> with the unit is rated for 500-1000 charges but as they say, your mileage
> may vary. 

> If I may ask, what is Tadpole asking for a UltraBook I AC adapter?
>
Actually the want 350 GBP, which should be about $540 depending a little
on your current 
exchange rate. It is an outrageus price even for a 4.5A power supply
with internal fan and
a most unusual connector.
 
 
> If anyone's interested, I'll post the quote and spec as it becomes
> available.
>
That would be nice. I'd say they stand a pretty good chanse at beating
Tadpoles
price for a new battery pack.

 
> 3. If you don't want to use the battery, as in a lab setting, the empty
> battery
> well can also be used to install a 3rd internal drive: we have a
> configuration
> here that uses 3 drives, 1 is Solaris and Sybase ASE with drives 2 and 3 as
> the
> database partitions.
>
Is that really possible on all models? Dont you need the special model
with an extra drive slot?
Tha battery box is much narrower, longer and has a different connector
than the HD box/cartridge/shell.

BTW, did you ever try to upgrade the drives? I opened the hardrive shell
and it seems to contain simply a standard IDE drive with a connector
converter between the IDE connector and the proprietary external
connector.
Is there anything stopping me from sticking a 20G or even larger drive
in there and reformatting and installing Solaris on it (ie any Tadpole
nonstandard stuff to get in the way?)

 
> ref the SCSI-style external connector: it's a male, 15-pin, single row
> connector
> for an external floppy drive. I've never seen one of these units or the
> cable,
> so if you have them, I'd hold on to them.

Are we talking about the same connector ? I was reffering to the actual
connector used for SCSI connection,
the one at the rear on the right side of the laptop right next to the
connector for external keyboard.
The floppy drive connector is under the pcmcia slots if I understand the
manual correctly.
The SCSI connector looks like a SCSI connector but its much thinner than
usual, and it actually has 2 rows
of pins if you look carefully.

Anyway, I dont have the connector but I will probably need a cd drive
soon to upgrade the OS from Solaris
2.6 to 8. Actually my grand plan was to try and uppgrade the drives (to
say 20G which according to Tadpole requires Solaris 8 (for > 8 G) ) and
run Linux on one and Solaris on the other.
By swapping the boot drive it should be quite easy to boot either Linux
or Solaris as needed.

Maybe I can install using some sort of netboot instead.

If anyone has installed Linux on the Tadpole I would be interested in
any tips and quirks, which distribution and kernel version etc.


Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Peter