[SunHELP] SPARC 5 memory

[Gereon Stein]

Paul Khoury wrote:
> 
> Okay, I finally made the plunge and bought a SS5/70 off ebay last week dirt cheap
> (like less than 30 bucks).  Anyways, I don't know if it has RAM or not, it was just really cheap.
Then expect it to come without any, as SS5 RAM is really expensive due to being
very rare (5V DIMMs is not exactly the established industry standard; don't even
think of trying to install PC SDRAM...)

> Do I need to make a lot of dramatic changes for upgrading from an SS2 (sun4c) to this machine
> (sun4m)?  I'd rather not upgrade the OS with all the mods I've made, plus it'll be my main webserver (and
> I'm hosting other peoples' stuff now also).
> 
Yes, sure. The SS5 has got SCA drive bays, requiring you to install 80pin SCA disk drives 
internally (using rare and expensive mounting frames or fiddling with any kind of suitably
DIY fittings).
You may want to opt for not using internal disks but attaching your old drive externally, 
or - what I've seen other people do - hook the narrow-SCSI drive to the CDROM connector if no
CDROM is installed. Requires slightly more "fiddling" to get it to stay in place, though.

For a console, you may want one out of cg3, cg6 or S24 (the latter fits in a special slot
that only the SS5 has); or go for serial tty or course... whatever SBUS Framebuffer your
SS2 has should work, though.

> Also, how much RAM can you go up to on this machine, and how many slots are on the board?
> And does anyone know where I can get RAM?  I found 32MB on eBay for 25 bucks each.
> Is that reasonable, or can I get them cheaper?  I'd like to go up to 128MB, 256MB or more would
> be very desireable (my ThinkPad alone is gonna be upgraded to 544MB this week).
256Meg is the limit. The SS5 takes 8 or 32Meg DIMMs, 32Meg parts have to come first if both
sizes are used. $25 is amazingly cheap in SS5 terms. I'd buy them instantly for that price,
but few if any sellers on ebay.com are willing to ship internationally :-(

Well, for an X-station, my SS5 just does with 64Megs anyway... (yes it runs Solaris 8)

Jerry

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