Date: Thu, 25 Nov 99 20:22:44 EST From: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #34 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Thu, 25 Nov 99 Volume 12 : Issue 34 Today's Topics: "unix clones" Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #32 audio connector DNS w/IP forwarding Help. SparcServer doesn't print PC monitor on SPARCstation (2 msgs) PC monitor on SPARCstation (Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #33 ) PC monitor on SPARCstation and PPP on Solaris 7 (2 msgs) PC monitors on sparcstation, and vice-versa ppp speed Routing and PPP SS1 reporting ff:ff:ff: for an ethernet address... (2 msgs) Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #33 (2 msgs) various in Digest V12 #33 Who wants my Sun 3/50 System? +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Submissions: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com | | Requests: suns-at-home-request@net-kitchen.com | | WWW Archive access: http://www.net-kitchen.com/~sah | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 05:58:27 PST From: "v bender" Subject: To: adh@an.bradford.ma.us not true. if you have solaris 2, you can set them to 76800. i get 2-3k and sometimes even a little over on my ss2/weitek. this is with a moto 33.6 modem and the port set to 76800. Can you please provide us with a step-by-step list of instructions to do this then? I am using Solaris 2.6 5/98 on a Sun SPARCStation 1+ and pppd 2.3.1 (I think). ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 07:16:35 -0600 From: Matt Crawford Subject: "unix clones" Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #32 To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Pete Fenelon says: > It's probably cheaper in terms of investment and effort to use an old > x86 box running a free Unix clone as a modem host/router/cache/proxy > anyway -- that's the current state of affairs on my LAN. Objection! FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD are not "Unix clones". They *are* Unix. For the uninitiated, sandwich any of those between "www." and ".org" to learn more. NetBSD runs on many hardware platforms, including SPRAC of course. FreeBSD is very nice for laptops as well as x86-type desktops. I recently relegated my SPARCstation-1 to file, printer and mail service and built a new box around an AMD CPU and a top-of-the-line SCSI system. It runs FreeBSD, although I will also install Solaris, Linux and two or three flavors of (yecchh) Windows on it when I get the time. Matt Crawford - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 21:10:47 +0100 (MET) From: f.messineo@ccii.unipi.it Subject: audio connector To: Dwight McKay > > Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 17:31:36 +0000 (GMT) > From: "Richard J. Pontefract" > Subject: Audio connector pinout for SS1 > To: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com > > I have an SS1 at home, and was trying to find out what the pinout is for the > audio connector. I have looked at the FAQ which says to look at the hardware > reference. No information in there. Does anyone know what pins are used for > what? > > Rick I found this on a old version of the sun hardware FAQ. It works fine on my SS1. + DIN-8 audio port on SPARCstation IPX, others? ------- / === \ / \ / 6 7 8 \ | | | 3 4 5 | \ / \ 1 2 / \_______/ 1 not connected 4 not connected 7 GND 2 not connected 5 not connected 8 audio out 3 audio in - 6 audio in + regards Francesco Messineo frank@ing.unipi.it PGP public key: http://sirius.ccii.unipi.it/~frank/public.asc KeyID 1024/2937E1A5 Key fingerprint = 5B 41 DC 7C 06 90 29 CA 39 05 59 F5 B3 CC 9A 9D In a free and open marketplace, it would be surprising to have such an obviously flawed standard generate much enthusiasm outside of the criminal community. --Mitch Stone on Microsoft ActiveX - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 10:12:14 +0100 From: Peter Koch Subject: DNS w/IP forwarding To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Hi! Greg wrote: >Personally though I'd very very strongly recommend upgrading your entire >system to NetBSD (or OpenBSD). You can continue to run most SunOS >software under the emulation environment (SunWindows stuff doesn't work, >I don't think, but everything else should -- eg. I run Netscape). Maybe it's a matter of taste, but i'd advise people to run SunOS. It is still more mature and performs much better on old Sun hardware than NetBSD or Linux. You have more work with SunOS, sure. But you CAN compile bind-4.9.7, traceroute, squid, apache, .... If someone is willing to learn Unix (and why else does he have a Sun at home, eh?), this is only a little part in a greater project: "How do i get software packages build from source and how are they configured." SunOS is still supported by many major software packages and with the spread of autoconf, SunOS remains supported in newer projects too! Try it: gcc, X11R6, sendmail-8, they all build out of the box. I think that having all these goodies as rpm (or -bin.tgz or whatever) is nice for the WIMPs and the GURUs, but you don't learn anything if you unpack a rpm... or find the stuff preinstalled by the OS. >I would guess that if you require DNS then you're on the Internet, and >it really is not safe to run SunOS-4 on the open Internet any more, even >with all of Sun's "recommended" security patches installed. You'll also >find that NetBSD has much more modern networking utilities. I do not think that SunOS is inherently insecure. The TCP/IP-stack is not very vulnerable and with the tcp-wrapper, libwrap and portmap from Vietse most (if not all) holes are stuffed. And remember: If you miss something, get the sources and build it! I never had big problems compiling software on SunOS. MY SunOS is full of all these nifty programs that didn't even exist eight years ago: sendmail-8, popper, dig, ... whatever i want. I love to see NetBSD and Linux grow and evolve. But at the same time they're becoming "fat" (you know what i mean). MY SunOS is a lean, mean, small figthing machine and i do not have to miss anything. It's a lot of work, but it is worth it! I've learned a lot of Unix this way, this is a great benefit. Tschuess Peter P.S.: Greg: Don't make SunOS worse than it is! The people with a Sun at home are no WIMPs and have choosen another way than PC's and Windoze and even Linux! SunOS has been THE OS for old Suns over the years and since it was years ahead of other Unices in it's best times, it is still a good OS today. - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 00:00:25 +0100 From: Rainer Duffner Subject: Help. SparcServer doesn't print To: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com Hi, I've been given an old Sun from a friend. It's labeled "SparcServer10" (this is really a "SparcStation" then, I believe) and has 64 MB RAM,1 GB SCSI-HD and a huge and heavy monitor. I installed Solaris 7 from the promo CD on it (which was a pain because it didn't detect the (un/re)formated HD - shame on Solaris 7). I also have a Fujitsu PrintPartner10 PostScript Laser-Printer which I wanted to attach to it via the parallel-cable. I set the printer up via the "admintool" and chose "bpp0" as device. However, the printer doesn't print. Not a single bit. In fact, the output of lpstat -t shows: *** # lpstat -t scheduler is running system default destination: fp device for fp: /dev/bpp0 character set c fp accepting requests since Wed Nov 10 20:54:37 MET 1999 printer fp faulted printing fp-7. enabled since Wed Nov 10 20:54:37 MET 1999. available. printer powered off or disconnected; source: parallel fp-7 sun.mydomain.de!rainer 1330 Nov 10 23:25 **** Do I need a special cable ? Under Windows and FreeBSD (and Linux) the same cable works good. What else is there to do? Thanks. cheers, Rainer - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 10:40:16 +0100 From: thefinn@altern.org Subject: PC monitor on SPARCstation To: Curt Sampson , Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com, >> Is it possible to connect a SPARCstation IPX to a PC monitor? I know that the >> 13W3 connector on the Sun only supplies the "Composite Sync" signal but my >> monitor requires separate Horizontal and Vertical Sync. > >I do not believe that this is the case; horizontal and vertical >sync are present on a couple of the pins of a 13W3 adapter; I don't Do you mean you know for sure that *on the Sun IPX* the 13W3 connector supplies H and V-Sync? I have no "Service Manual" for my IPX but, from the Sun Hardware Reference Manual by James W. Birdsall, I see that 13W3's pinout is: gray/ 1 gnd* red * * green blue 2 vertical sync* | 1o 2o 3o 4o 5o | | 3 sense #2 (O) (O) (O) 4 sense gnd 6o 7o 8o 9o 10o 5 composite sync * * 6 horizontal sync* 7 gnd* * Considered obsolete, may not be 8 sense #1 connected. 9 sense #0 10 composite gnd As you can see, pins 2 and 6 are "considered obsolete". I don't know when Sun decided to not connect this pins anymore. Maybe my IPX still supplies them? The thing I know for sure is that, on the SPARCclassic Service Manual (the older Service Manual I found on the Internet), pins 1,2,6,7 are reported as grounds... >I've never seen a 13W3 to HD15 cable, although one could be built. >However, I have seen adapters to bring 13W3 out to five BNC connectors >(red, green, blue, vertical sync and horizontal sync); if your Yes, I know these adapters exist. Adam Stouffer reported that: >I use a Mag DJ530 on a sparc2 and SS1+ with the adapter from www.si87.com. >Its a bit expensive at $30, but still a lot cheaper than a fixed frequency >monitor. Basically if your monitor can handle 1280x1024 at 60hz it should >work. Hope this helps. The fact is that if these adapters are "old", I guess the H and V-Sync signals are directly obtained from pins 2 and 6 of the 13W3 connector. This kind of adapter could not work on the IPX (and SS1+ or sparc2)... But if this adapter somehow obtains H and V-Sync from the C-Sync (Some kind of circuit present in the adapter), well, this *must* work. Does anyone know the exact pinout of the 13W3 connector present on the IPX? (I was not able to find info on the IPX on http://docs.sun.com) If H and V-Sync are not supplied by the IPX, I think some adapters are able to "split" H and V-Sync starting from Composite Sync. Does anyone know such a circuit? *PLEASE* help! Thanks all. P.S.: I payed $50 for my IPX... Buying the adapter for $30 could not be considered very "sane". I am going to build a ***cheap*** one myself. Definitely ;). - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:32:45 -0500 (EST) From: Curt Sampson Subject: PC monitor on SPARCstation To: thefinn@altern.org On Tue, 16 Nov 1999 thefinn@altern.org wrote: > Do you mean you know for sure that *on the Sun IPX* the 13W3 connector supplies > H and V-Sync? No, I don't know for sure, and unfortunately I'm no longer in a position to test this. However, I'm pretty sure I have used an old (i.e., 5 BNC input) Sun 17" color monitor on an IPX with a 13W3 -> 5BNC cable, and it worked fine. Did these old monitors sync on green? I'm suspecting not. cjs -- Curt Sampson 917 532 4208 De gustibus, aut bene aut nihil. The most widely ported operating system in the world: http://www.netbsd.org - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 07:07:54 -0600 From: Matt Crawford Subject: PC monitor on SPARCstation (Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #33 ) To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com > Is it possible to connect a SPARCstation IPX to a PC monitor? I know > that the 13W3 connector on the Sun only supplies the "Composite Sync" > signal but my monitor requires separate Horizontal and Vertical Sync. When my original 16" monitor went dark after 10 years of service, I bought an Optiquest Q-71 (cheap 17" PC monitor) and a little adapter plug to go between 13W3 and the standard PC video cable of the monitor. I'm racking my brain in vain for the name of the company that sold the adapter (something along the lines of "Universal Cable"), but I can tell you that it's their part number 1395 and it cost 25 or 30 dollars. When choosing a monitor, make sure you meet the frequency requirements: 66Hz or 76Hz vertical, depending on your framebuffer (probably the former); 65kHz or 75kHz horizontal, respectively; and 77MHz or 90Mhz video bandwidth. (Those figures are approximate from memory, but fairly safe.) Monitors which don't meet those specs are rare, but do exist at the low end. Matt Crawford - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 00:05:40 -0500 (EST) From: Curt Sampson Subject: PC monitor on SPARCstation and PPP on Solaris 7 To: Suns-at-Home-List@tigger.net-kitchen.com > From: The Finn > Subject: PC monitor on SPARCstation > > Is it possible to connect a SPARCstation IPX to a PC monitor? I know that the > 13W3 connector on the Sun only supplies the "Composite Sync" signal but my > monitor requires separate Horizontal and Vertical Sync. I do not believe that this is the case; horizontal and vertical sync are present on a couple of the pins of a 13W3 adapter; I don't even think that composite sync is present on green. You just need an appropriate cable. I've never seen a 13W3 to HD15 cable, although one could be built. However, I have seen adapters to bring 13W3 out to five BNC connectors (red, green, blue, vertical sync and horizontal sync); if your monitor has these inputs you could use that. If not, there are also 5BNC to HD15 adapters, so you could put a pair of these adapters end-to-end. > From: Craig Dewick > Subject: PPP on Solaris 7 > > On a Sparc 1+ you are > really pushing it to do anything more than 19200 bps reliably with the > on-board serial ports though. I don't think so. At one point I was using a Sun 3/60 (which is about half the speed of an SS1) running NetBSD as my home workstation and gateway machine, talking to the modem at 38.4, and I wasn't losing characters. (Of course, my X session would freeze for a second or two when someone on another machine on the network started downloading a web page. :-)) I later upgraded that machine to an SS1 and things were happier. This was without NAT, though; if you start using that you start using a lot more CPU. > SunOS 5.6 and above has provision to use faster rates, but older machines > don't have anywhere near enough CPU grunt to keep up... That's why Sun > coded in the 38400 bps limit. No, actually it's a problem with the clock divisor in the serial chip; 38.4 is the highest `standard' rate that's available. As others have mentioned, you could run at at 76.8 if you really wanted to (and if your particular driver supports it), but I doubt that modems would talk that speed. I should mention that I'm typing this now an an SS20 with a 56K modem hooked up, and even with the serial port at 38.4, it's not too bad. > From: adh@an.bradford.ma.us (Sandwich Maker) > Subject: PPP on Solaris 7 > > i had little trouble getting aspppd to work - but then, i already had > a lot of uucp experience. The same goes for me. I hear that setup has gotten easier under 2.7; the biggest problem with 2.6 was you needed to be a networking export to get the damn thing going. Once I got it going for someone, though, it worked just fine. > it would be soo easy to 'chip' the motherboard with an 85230 serial > chip instead of the 8530, but we'd need a driver tweak to take > advantage of the fifo mode. maybe if/when sun goes to open source... Or just run NetBSD on it; that driver would be dead easy to tweak. > From: "Clarence W. Wilkerson" > a) disable compression in the two modems Note that this may actually make interactive stuff seem faster, since you the reduce latency between the two modems. > b) enable compression before the modems in the > the two ppp setups. This is fine if you have a machine with enough CPU horsepower to deal with it. I'm not sure an SS1 does. cjs -- Curt Sampson 917 532 4208 De gustibus, aut bene aut nihil. The most widely ported operating system in the world: http://www.netbsd.org - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 23:53:42 +1100 (EST) From: Craig Dewick Subject: PC monitor on SPARCstation and PPP on Solaris 7 On Mon, 15 Nov 1999, Curt Sampson wrote: > > Is it possible to connect a SPARCstation IPX to a PC monitor? I know that the > > 13W3 connector on the Sun only supplies the "Composite Sync" signal but my > > monitor requires separate Horizontal and Vertical Sync. > > I do not believe that this is the case; horizontal and vertical > sync are present on a couple of the pins of a 13W3 adapter; I don't > even think that composite sync is present on green. You just need > an appropriate cable. > > I've never seen a 13W3 to HD15 cable, although one could be built. Ultraspec make their 13W3/HD15 adaptors in cabled versions as well as standard adaptors. I'm not sure what length the cables versions are though. Go to "http://www.ultraspec.com/13w3adap.htm" and look at the data. Regards, Craig. -- Craig Dewick. Send email to "cdewick@lios.apana.org.au" Point a web browser at 'http://lios.apana.org.au/~cdewick/sun_shack.html' to access my archive of Sun information and links to other places. For info about Sun Ripened Kernels, go to "http://www.sunrk.com.au" - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 11:38:54 -0600 From: Matt Crawford Subject: PC monitors on sparcstation, and vice-versa To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com I turned up the packing list from my adapter widget. It came from "Ultra Spec Cables" -- http://www.ultraspec.com. I got the sparcstation 13W3 to HD15 monitor adapter, but they have the opposite one as well, and others. (Their catalog notes that certain Sun monitors (it lists them) won't work with a PC in DOS mode even with the PC-to-Sun Monitor) adapter. - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 13:10:55 -0500 From: adh@an.bradford.ma.us (Sandwich Maker) Subject: ppp speed To: v_bender@hotmail.com "From: "v bender" " "not true. if you have solaris 2, you can set them to 76800. "i get 2-3k and sometimes even a little over on my ss2/weitek. this is "with a moto 33.6 modem and the port set to 76800. " "Can you please provide us with a step-by-step list of instructions to do "this then? I am using Solaris 2.6 5/98 on a Sun SPARCStation 1+ and pppd "2.3.1 (I think). can't help you i'm afraid; afaik 2.3.1 has a totally different setup method than aspppd. for those of us/you using aspppd, i just put 76800 as the speed in my /etc/uucp/Devices entry. __________________________________________________________________________ Andrew Hay Rubber on the wheel is faster than internet rambler rubber on the heel - Lightnin' adh@an.bradford.ma.us Hopkins, Big Black Cadillac Blues - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 22:49:16 -0500 From: "Tai" Subject: Routing and PPP To: Hi everyone, I am using a SS10 and Solaris 7's aspppd. I get it to dialup, = authenticate and sync=20 with my ISP ( Mindspring ). The problem seems to be routing to the = interface. I have=20 the /etc/notrouter file, default_route entry in the /etc/asppp.cf. I've = tried everything but=20 cannot route through the interface. HELP!!!!! Thanks, Tai - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 05:54:07 PST From: "v bender" Subject: SS1 reporting ff:ff:ff: for an ethernet address... To: Gert.Cuypers@esat.kuleuven.ac.be The Sun SPARCStation 1, 1+, 2, etc. have a NVRAM chip that is battery powered. It just so happened that on one of my Solaris System Administration courses I got my hands on Sun field engineer's handbooks. The specification calls for three different NVRAM chips, two of which have a 3-7 years of battery life. After that, the NVRAM chip loses the power to store the Ethernet address, HostID and PROM settings. There are UNDOCUMENTED commands in the PROM that I've tried and that Sun doesn't want you to know that take care of this. Actually, these are not even described in the engineer's fieldbooks but in a special addendum that Sun has not and will not release. Those NVRAM chips, naturally, cost to high heavens unless you can find someone off the 'Net to sell you a bunch of used ones. I have to look at my documentation on what the PROM commands are and I will post them to Suns-at-home. But be forewarned though, once reprogrammed, such a NVRAM chip cannot hold the settings and if you power the machine off the settings are lost and you have to do it all over again. Unfortunately, unless you wrote the Ethernet address and HostID down like me, you pretty much have to get a new NVRAM chip. What are you going to reprogram your Ethernet address to otherwise? Maybe you could get it off the serial number of your machine somewhere in some database on Sun's site... All of you Sun SPARCStation users out there... The clock is ticking in your machine... ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 16:32:28 +0100 (MET) From: Gert Cuypers Subject: SS1 reporting ff:ff:ff: for an ethernet address... To: Gert.Cuypers@esat.kuleuven.ac.be, v_bender@hotmail.com Thanks for your advice. Last weekend, I was considering the problem myself and already figured that this might be the problem. In one of the Sun-FAQs on the net (http://www.squirrel.com/squirrel/sun-nvram-hostid.faq.html), there was a method for replacing the battery (non-advised, just included for completeness) by cutting the battery/clock chip. I did just this, connected it to a power supply, and after a while the current consumption was below scale (microamps, I guess). I then replaced the supply with two 1.5V batteries and I reprogrammed the Nvram, as described in the FAQ. Since then, it has been running perfect. Okay, the hostID and the ethernet address are arbitrary, but so what (for an internal network, who will care) ? Maybe I'll post some pictures on the net. The procedure is not that hard, an I think the fun and the 20$ saved is worth the trouble. > Unfortunately, unless you wrote the Ethernet address and HostID down like > me, you pretty much have to get a new NVRAM chip. You assume that a NEW nvram chip holds an Ethernet address, but I don't think so. In the FAQ, it says that even a new nvram chip needs to be programmed (ie: has no ethernet address of its own). Of course, I am not sure of this. Bye, Gert - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 09:24:10 -0500 (EST) From: Rick Leir EPS Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #33 To: Dwight McKay > Is it possible to connect a SPARCstation IPX to a PC monitor? I know > that the 13W3 connector on the Sun only supplies the "Composite Sync" > Is there a way to build an adapter? The adapter (13w3 to d15) was commercially available as recently as last year. Search the archives of this mail list. cheers -- Rick Rick Leir rleir@igs.net "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." - Henry Spencer - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 09:27:33 -0500 (EST) From: Rick Leir EPS Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #33 To: Dwight McKay > which frame buffer would be the best one to put in a sparc 1+? The cgsix sbus card would be most appropriate. 256 colours, and accelerated if you use Sun's libraries. Historical interest only. cheers -- Rick Rick Leir rleir@igs.net "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." - Henry Spencer - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 13:00:35 -0500 From: adh@an.bradford.ma.us (Sandwich Maker) Subject: various in Digest V12 #33 To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com "From: gasp@lava.net " "could anyone point me in some direction as to which "frame buffer would be the best one to put in a sparc 1+? cg6, aka gx, or tgx; these have gotten quite cheap recently. "From: The Finn " "Is it possible to connect a SPARCstation IPX to a PC monitor? I know that the "13W3 connector on the Sun only supplies the "Composite Sync" signal but my "monitor requires separate Horizontal and Vertical Sync. i bought a commercial adapter several years ago, for ~$35; my crt does svga -- 1280x1024x60, 1024x768x75 [sony 15sx]. it has no problem with 1152x900x66. "From: ocsys@sover.net " "I have a few sets of older Sun FE handbooks I would like to sell. I "was wondering if it would be appropriate to list these in the Suns-at- "Home digest. Both sets are complete, in good condition and "include volumes I and II. -pleeeease- tell us more! "From: adh@an.bradford.ma.us (Sandwich Maker) "Subject: PPP on Solaris 7 " ""1. Is there a way to achieve at least 2-3KB/s transfer rate on a Sun ""SPARCStation 1+, and if so, what is it??? " "i get 2-3k and sometimes even a little over on my ss2/weitek. this is "with a moto 33.6 modem and the port set to 76800. p.s. should've added i'm running solaris 2.5, recently patched with the recommended cluster. "From: robert@bonomi.com (robert bonomi) "Subject: PPP on Solaris 7 " "> 1. Is there a way to achieve at least 2-3KB/s transfer rate on a Sun "> SPARCStation 1+, and if so, what is it??? " "plenty of RAM, and an efficient O/S. SunOS 4.1.3/4, or one of the *BSDs that "has efficient serial support. Solaris 2.x has too much overhead load. not for me -- i run 2.5 on a ss2/weitek and i've seen 3.34 on netnews feeds. 2-3K is common. "From: "jc bernardo" "Subject: Sun Monitor--Making me Dizzy " "My ss4 running 2.5.1 with " "Sun Color Monitor "NDP Model 4472 " "is flickering and giving me a headache. In Windows, that's adjusted by the refresh rate. Is there something similar for Sun? afaik no. "From: Pete Fenelon " "An IPX makes a fine X terminal, fileserver and general Solaris portability "tester for me. Add a Weitek 80MHz CPU and you've got something that starts "to rival low-end 10s, 20s and SS4/5s. (No, I haven't yet got a Weitek; if "anyone in the UK has them at a sensible price...) about 4-5 years ago, i was in an environment with a lot of sparc 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s, and 20s; most of the 2s were weitekked. i was put in charge of what to upgrade and how, and what to replace. i scrutinized all the relevant benchmarks. as i recall, a ss5/70 was ~1.5x a ss2/weitek, ~3x a plain ss2; maybe a 10/20 wasn't faster but anything later was. __________________________________________________________________________ Andrew Hay Rubber on the wheel is faster than internet rambler rubber on the heel - Lightnin' adh@an.bradford.ma.us Hopkins, Big Black Cadillac Blues - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 13:20:36 -0800 From: Kevin Cosgrove Subject: Who wants my Sun 3/50 System? To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.COM After 10 years of use as my personal machine and UUCP mail server with minimal trouble, I've retired my Sun 3/50 system. I'd rather not see this end up in the landfill. I've seen Sun 3 class machines selling for in the neighborhood of $50-$80 on E-Bay w/o disk drives. Could anyone use this system? Make me an offer, including the buyer paying shipping. Here's the long and short description of what I'm parting with. SYNOPSIS: Sun 3/50, 17" monochrome monitor, 2 attached SCSI hard drives, keyboard, 8MB expansion RAM (12MB total), extra full-height SCSI drives in enclosures, optical mouse, QIC-24 tape drive, blank tapes. SunOS 4.1.1_U1, X11R5pl23, plenty of GNU packages, Tcl/Tk DETAILS: Taken in part from "THE SUN HARDWARE REFERENCE" compiled by James W. Birdsall 3/50 ----- Processor(s): 68020 @ 15.7MHz, 68881 FPU, Sun-3 MMU, 8 hardware contexts, 1.5 MIPS CPU: 501-1075/1133/1162/1207 Chassis type: wide pizza box Bus: none Memory: 4M physical (documented), 256M virtual, 270ns cycle 8M Helios expansion RAM board Notes: Cycle-stealing monochrome frame buffer. 4M memory maximum stock, but third-party memory expansion boards were sold, allowing at least 12M. No bus or P4 connector. On-board SCSI. Thin coax or AUI Ethernet. Code-named "Model 25". Disks ------ disk 1: sd0 CDC Wren IV 94171 (568MB unformatted) disk 2: sd4 CDC Wren III 94161 (155MB unformatted) Other disks are CDC Wren series; I think they're a combination of 155MB and 300MB drives. Keyboard Type 3 --------------- Type 3 keyboards were introduced with the Sun-3 model line (?). They have much smaller flat areas around the keys than a type 2 and the front edge is curved downward rather than being a wedge. They connect to the CPU with a male DB15 on the end of an integral coiled cable. The mouse plugs into an RJ connector in the back of the keyboard. Since type 4 keyboards can be used with systems expecting a type 3 with only a connector adapter, presumably type 3 keyboards could be used with systems expecting a type 4. The pin-out of the DB15 connector (on the CPU) is: 1 RxD0 (keyboard) 8 GND 2 GND 9 GND 3 TxD0 (keyboard) 10 VCC 4 GND 11 VCC 5 RxD1 (mouse) 12 VCC 6 GND 14 VCC 7 TxD1 (mouse) 15 VCC Sun-3 ----- Optical mice, usually white, from Mouse Systems. They use the same mouse pad as Sun-2 mice. Cable with RJ connector which connects to the back of a type-3 keyboard. ECL mono -------- Actually, only the video signals are ECL level; the sync signals are still TTL level. These are used with later Sun-2 monochrome video cards, Sun-3 monochrome video, and Sun-4 monochrome video; probably Sun-386i monochrome video as well. They connect to the video system via a DB-9. The pin-out of the DB-9 (on the video system) is: 1 VIDEO+ 6 VIDEO- 3 HSYNC 7 GND 4 VSYNC 8 GND 9 GND QIC-24 ------ Quarter-inch cartridge tapes, maximum capacity 60M. The standard tape drive for Sun-3's. Nine tracks. Can also read and write QIC-11 tapes. Note that there were actually two QIC-11 formats, one with only four tracks (capacity 20M) and an extended one with nine tracks, which had the same capacity as QIC-24 but slightly different formatting. SunOS allows selection of QIC-24 or QIC-11 (by using different entries in /dev) when using a QIC-24 drive, but does not distinguish between the two varieties of QIC-11; if you write past the end of track four, a real QIC-11 drive will not be able to read all the data. In general, this doesn't matter unless you want to read the tape on a real QIC-11 drive, or sometimes when making boot tapes. _____________________________________________________________________ Pager: (503) 202-3059 Kevin Cosgrove, P.E. Work: (503) 627-3259 Kevin.E.Cosgrove@Tek.COM Home: (503) 533-7722 kevinc@dOink.COM _ , __ ' ) / / ) /-< _ , __o ____ / _____ _, __ ___ . _ / )