[SPARCbook] Resurrecting sparcbook 2 ... how?

[Stuart Duncan]

It's not that it's going to just keel over and die in a few weeks -
SPARCbook 2 isn't y2k compliant.

Dead NVRAM batteries can be repaired easilly.  (easilly - given the
circumstances)
I don't know about compatibillities =/  I know that I can still buy new
NVRAM chips...  and I put a new NVRAM chip from an ELC into my SPARCbook
and it worked.  :P

BTW:  Are you the shmuck who baught the two SPARCbook 2's from Tadpole? 
(Old stock.. brand new, still in thier boxes with all the manuals,
accessories, etc)
I wanted to buy one of them.  :P

If so, I'd realy love a set of the boxes/packing that they ship with. 
Perhaps if you send me this dead SB2, you can pack it in there.  :)


Cheers,
Stuart Duncan

Bob wrote:
> Well, I see we can agree to disagree.....(:+}}... and that is fine.
> I learned from the old school that in business, ``the customer is
> always right''.  Nowadays, it seems, that may have changed a little,
> and the customer is ``constrained to accept'' whatever.  Bad karma.
> 
> As to the machines working.... good machines work for a long time.
> I have some 15 year old unix toys going strong every day, and if you
> don't need gigahertz speeds, then the still speak the speak and quack
> like the racing ducks, just fine.  Some of the older machines are even
> built way better than some of the newer machines, in many respects.
> That silly little SB2 is built like a Tiger Tank, and will probably
> outlive me.   I would expect I could get at least another 5 years out
> of it, and possibly more.  It won't be a prancing horse from Modena, but
> it will still do its job, just fine.  But, it has two potential buggerboos.
> One is that darned NVRAM Sun thingie of the latter SPARC era.  Battery
> nvram is a nice idea in theory, but a dud in practice.  Also, it locks
> you into system.  IFF that particular nvram goes out of production, and
> by now it probably has, with just shelfstock around, then what do you do?
> A nightmare for service folks or the tailendian charlies like many of us
> aboard the list, who only touch the prized high and mighty unix toyz
> when they come out the other and at a fiver per.  A second are special
> codes that become lost in time as support fades or parts need replacing
> and docs become separated from the hardware, or something as simple as
> the guys left the company for elsewhere, last year.  Then a perfectly fine
> machine becomes a total dud because not because of any fault of its own,
> but because of a silly 4 digit code  (or whatever it actually is).
> A nighmare for us service folks or tailendian charlies, again.
> 
> That is the kind of thing that tends to bother me, as a great waste
> of horsepower.  It is a compromise in design type of constraint upon
> the customer.
> 
> If a company backs the customer into that kind of a corner, and then
> just totally forgets you, that IMHO is not too kool.
> 
> Tadpole has been nice, though, to me to help me resurrect the critter.
> I commend them heartily for their assistance, even though it is now
> out of the mainstream niche.  One of my pair of SB2's is purring almost
> like that prancing horse from Modena  (well maybe like the Arrows),
> but the other still needs its secret codes twiddled.  It will survive
> in the end, and be a fine little machine.
> 
> > Hugo.
> 
> Bob
> 
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