[rescue] Dead VME 3B2 on ebay

[Dave Fischer]

sun.mail.list47 at oryx.cc writes:

>From your eBay auction:
>............................

>I believe these floppy drives originally came with this system, and that
>the board is a scsi->floppy interface. One of the cables needs to be
>replaced, but it's a standard cable.

>............................

>On the 3b2 systems that I supported, which include 600G and 600GR
>systems, the floppy drive was supported by a separate controller.

>Are you stating/suggesting that on some 3B2 systems, this was not the
>case and that the floppy was controlled via the SCSI controller, in a
>round about way?

>I don't mean for this to come off as sounding like I doubt the above
>statement.  Due to only working with the (2) models I administered, I
>really don't know.  Thanks for any replies or comments.

The VME 3B2 is an oddity. 

The CPU board has EEPROMS from the third-party company that made
the peripheral VME boards. I suspect they made their own boot proms,
for their controllers. The system came with a SCSI controller but
no floppy controller, and a board attached to a floppy with a 50-pin
ribbon cable coming out of it. My best guess is that's a scsi->floppy
adaptor and their firmware allows booting from it.

But I've never seen the machine run, so I could be wrong.

------ David Fischer ------- dave at cca.org ------- http://www.cca.org ------