IBM professional graphics adapter and monitor
Before I ebay buy a monitor, original IBM 5135, will it match the scan rates of the IBM of the IBM Professional Graphics Controller? I wanted to keep this system looking all original IBM. Will I need a different monitor, Princeton or something like that? Your recommendations appreciated. Thanks, Randy
Re: Sun SPARCstation LX boot from CDROM?
On Aug 28, 2020, at 3:01 PM, Alan Perry via cctech wrote: > My collection is primarily sun4c and sun4m machines. I have been having > problems with the CD drives that I have been acquiring (purchase or rescue) > in the last year or so. 4-5 drives, none worked. It has all been drives in > 411 cases or going into them, no failures with internal drives. Haven’t > investigated why. 95% likelihood of faulty miniature electrolytics. ok bear. -- until further notice
Re: Sun SPARCstation LX boot from CDROM?
My collection is primarily sun4c and sun4m machines. I have been having problems with the CD drives that I have been acquiring (purchase or rescue) in the last year or so. 4-5 drives, none worked. It has all been drives in 411 cases or going into them, no failures with internal drives. Haven’t investigated why. > On Aug 28, 2020, at 14:22, Tom Hunter via cctech > wrote: > > About 20 years ago I rescued a fully working Sun SPARCstation LX with CDROM > and QIC-150 tape drive - all 3 in lunchbox format - plus monitor when we > moved office and management decided they no longer wanted/needed it. > > Shortly after I have installed an early version of NetBSD (1.3.3) from the > CDROM drive. I played with it for a few days and then stored the entire > system in a museum grade glass display cabinet. This is indoors with > minimal dust and benign temperatures between 18 degrees C to about 28 > degrees C (typical room temperatures here in Perth in Western Australia > unless you run the air conditioner). > > > > Now retired I took the stack of "lunch-boxes" and the CRT monitor out of > the display cabinet and powered it up. After 20 years no smoke came out but > the system didn't boot but reported trouble with the NVRAM setting. I still > could start NetBSD using a "boot disk" command. I googled the problem and > bought and installed a replacement TIMEKEEPER chip (M48T08-100). After > defaulting the settings and setting the MAC address and machine ID it was > happy and booted from disk without intervention. In NetBSD I then set the > date and time and all was good. > > > > Then I decided to upgrade to the latest version of the SPARC version of > NetBSD 9.0. I downloaded and burned the ISO image to CD. Dropped it into a > CD caddy and inserted it into the CDROM drive (SUN Model 411 - really a > Sony CDU-8012 3.1e). I did a "probe-scsi-all" and it found both the hard > drive and the CDROM (target 6 unit 0). > > > > Now comes the problem - if it try to run from it via "boot cdrom" it > doesn't even access the CDROM drive - the LED doesn't turn on unlike when > you do the "probe-scsi-all". > > > > The "cdrom" alias is really: "/iommu/sbus/espdma@4,840/esp@4 > ,880/sd@6,0:d". > > > > The "disk" alias is really: > "/iommu/sbus/espdma@4,840/esp@4,880/sd@3,0" > > > > > The "@3" versus the "@6" are the SCSI IDs of the disk drive versus the > CDROM. I don't know what the trailing bits mean. I tried cdrom aliases from > "sd@6,0:0" to "sd@6,0:f" and all report: > > > > Can't read disk label > > Can't open disk label package > > Can't open boot device > > > > The LED doesn't blink even once unless I remove and re-insert the caddy > with the CDROM media or if I do a "probe-scsi" or "probe-scsi-all". > > > > I tried original Sun Solaris 2.4 installation media with the exact same > result/symptoms. > > > > I also tried to access the CDROM from NetBSD using "cat /dev/cd0a" but the > drive's LED didn't blink and I got an obscure error message. > > > > The Boot ROM revision is reported as 2.9. The system was bought about 1985 > or 1986 and has seen very little use. > > > > I searched google without success. Maybe I used the wrong search terms or > the equipment is just getting too old and FAQs have disappeared. > > > > What would cause the CDROM boot problem? > > > > There is a chance that the actual Sony drive died. I partially disassembled > it hoping to find dust stuck on the LASER optics but it was nice and clean. > The positioning and ejection mechanisms work just fine. The whole system > was working before I put it into my relatively dust proof glass display > cabinet. > > > > Thanks and best regards > > Tom Hunter
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
On Fri, 28 Aug 2020 at 18:07, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote: > > After having a run of almost half a dozen IDE hard drive failures recently in > a short period of time (on my older desktops which use them, I've decided that > I should see if there's an IDE emulator (using SD cards) SD (and the related MMC, now obsolete, and the many subtypes of SD such as SDHC, SDIO, SDXC, SDUC etc.) is a complex multiplexed protocol. MMC used 1 pin, original SD used 4, some of the newer ones use 8, etc. But CF card _are_ EIDE. The interface is the IDE interface. Only a conversion of connector is needed, no controller electronics at all. CF cards are an old standard now, but professional photographers still use them, and high-end digital cameras use them -- partly because of the large storage capacity but also, I suspect, because they are easier to handle in a hurry, or in suboptimal conditions. SD cards are too small to manipulate easily wearing gloves, and MicroSD cards can be lost in a decent carpet. So my advice is: don't even consider SD. Use CF. Convertors from CD to 44-pin 2.5" hard disk connector and to 40-pin desktop connector are widespread and very cheap. CF cards with capacities in megabytes are $10 or under. Cards with capacities in low numbers of gigabytes are only a little more. You can get cards in the 256GB range now, for a few hundred bucks. I think you'll find it much easier -- and cheaper -- to interface CF cards to EIDE than any variant of SD, which is probably going to involve multiple convertors and controllers: micro-SD to SD, then maybe to SATA to PATA, and associated points of failure etc. -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
swtpc, mikeholley, early computer stores
Contacts have been made to secure disposition of Bill Dawson and Mike Holley's site/contents. As part of that effort, I pointed swtpc.org to what used to be swtpc.com (and also swtpc.org). So if you go to swtpc.org you can traverse both sites. But that is not why I'm posting.. So in doing this and fixing a few links, I noticed there was a lot of pictures and info on "first computer store in..." information, apparently written by Mike Holley and we were just talking about that topic here. Some may want to go hunting for the computer store that was an adult movie place heh J
Re: Sun SPARCstation LX boot from CDROM?
On Fri, 28 Aug 2020 at 17:43, Tom Hunter via cctalk wrote: > > About 20 years ago I rescued a fully working Sun SPARCstation LX with CDROM > and QIC-150 tape drive - all 3 in lunchbox format - plus monitor when we > moved office and management decided they no longer wanted/needed it. > > Shortly after I have installed an early version of NetBSD (1.3.3) from the > CDROM drive. I played with it for a few days and then stored the entire > system in a museum grade glass display cabinet. This is indoors with > minimal dust and benign temperatures between 18 degrees C to about 28 > degrees C (typical room temperatures here in Perth in Western Australia > unless you run the air conditioner). > > Now retired I took the stack of "lunch-boxes" and the CRT monitor out of > the display cabinet and powered it up. After 20 years no smoke came out but > the system didn't boot but reported trouble with the NVRAM setting. I still > could start NetBSD using a "boot disk" command. I googled the problem and > bought and installed a replacement TIMEKEEPER chip (M48T08-100). After > defaulting the settings and setting the MAC address and machine ID it was > happy and booted from disk without intervention. In NetBSD I then set the > date and time and all was good. > > Then I decided to upgrade to the latest version of the SPARC version of > NetBSD 9.0. I downloaded and burned the ISO image to CD. Dropped it into a > CD caddy and inserted it into the CDROM drive (SUN Model 411 - really a > Sony CDU-8012 3.1e). I did a "probe-scsi-all" and it found both the hard > drive and the CDROM (target 6 unit 0). I have nothing useful to add on the CDROM, but regarding upgrading NetBSD, one option would be to setup a netboot server and upgrade that way. Once setup it also provides an easy way to boot any sparc box with a working network interface (handy for when a Quantum 105 has a sticktion day :). David
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
On 8/28/20 4:00 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: Plenty of code libraries out there. Why dink around when silicon is cheap? MCUs are everywhere; in many cases cheaper than discrete logic. Might have been better but I had the FPGA there anyway for other reasons so I just connected a few pins to the SD card and started writing code.
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
> On Aug 28, 2020, at 3:31 PM, Warner Losh via cctalk > wrote: > > >> On 8/28/20 1:10 PM, Paul Koning wrote: >> >> ... >> One oddity I remember from a decade ago is that it has a high speed mode >> where the clock speed is doubled. That's not strange. What's strange is >> that when you do this, the device switches from clocking data on the rising >> edge to clocking on the falling edge, or the other way around, I don't >> remember which. Fortunately I wasn't the hardware designer who had to cope >> with all that strangeness. > > I thought it was going from SPI mode to MMC mode that did this, not the > double clocking nor the 1bit to 4bit bus steps. It's been over a decade, but I'm pretty sure that 1 lane to 4 lane mode is just a width change. But when we started using 50 MHz capable cards and wanted to support those, I learned about that clock edge changeover. Both are 4 lanes wide, and the fast devices also support the slower clock and I believe initially come up in that mode. So you end up issuing a "go fast" command and as part of that you have to tell the FPGA to switch its latches to the other mode, and you do this dance carefully so you don't see any false error indications due to the latching mode change. paul
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
> On Aug 28, 2020, at 1:40 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk > wrote: > > On 8/28/20 10:10 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > >> SD is a packet based storage device on a serial interconnect > You really do need SMART monitoring on solid-state storage > which may or may not exist in the adapters. SSDs will silently > fail if they run out of sectors to write to. Yes, if they wear out. But the lowest I have seen is around 100 writes per sector, which means that once you've written 100x the device capacity total (times the "write amplification" which depends on write size patterns) you'd start to consume spare sectors, and you don't have a problem until those run out which is still some time later. That said, I have seen it happen, with very small CF cards and software that was, by a coding slip-up, writing every few minutes non-stop. > Also, I discovered recently that there is a maximum number of hours > measured in years on SSDs and systems will start throwing SMART > errors when that is exceeded. I have a few doing that now on systems > with minimal writes but lots of hours. That's curious. There may be a read retention time limit, though I think that applies only if the device is powered down. When powered up, the device firmware takes care of refreshing the sectors, somewhat like memory refresh but with refresh cycles of weeks or months. > There are long discussions elsewhere of the dangers of using non-industrial > rated CFs and SDs in storage applications. Good advice for serious work especially if you're running heavy workloads. I wouldn't worry about it much for my home firewall. But the servers running bitsavers.org are an entirely different matter. One way to look at it: if you are, or should be, using RAID, you should be using industrial grade SSDs. paul
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
On 8/28/20 10:07 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote: After having a run of almost half a dozen IDE hard drive failures recently in a short period of time (on my older desktops which use them, I've decided that I should see if there's an IDE emulator (using SD cards) available I could switch to. It's not an SD card per say. At least not directly. But I am very intrigued by the idea of using a Raspberry Pi to bit-bang IDE. Link - Raspberry Pi Gets PATA/IDE Drive Via GPIO Header | Hackaday - https://hackaday.com/2020/08/10/raspberry-pi-gets-pata-ide-drive-via-gpio-header/ -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
On 8/28/20 12:13 PM, David Bridgham via cctalk wrote: > On 8/28/20 1:10 PM, Paul Koning wrote: > >> SD is a packet based storage device on a serial interconnect, >> minimally one lane wide but it can also be four lanes (and that's >> typically how you use it). Apparently it starts out in a SPI >> compatible mode, interesting. Also, SD requires a rather complex >> handshake at power up to get to the point where you can do I/O. > > > I've implemented the SPI protocol in a little micro-coded engine on an > FPGA and have considered upgrading it to the standard interface over one > to four lanes except it looks like the SD licensing says I'm not > supposed to do that without paying them a bunch of money. And yeah, it > took me a while to work through the initialization dance and it still > fails from time to time (and from SD card to SD card). I use the 4 bit SDO when accessing SDHCs, adjusting speed according to whatever the card says. It's really easy with many microcontrollers. For example, the very inexpensive STM32F4 series implements it natively, computes CRC automatically and does it all in double-buffered DMA mode. Runs at around 180MHz too with lots of GPIOs and a bunch of SRAM. Plenty of code libraries out there. Why dink around when silicon is cheap? MCUs are everywhere; in many cases cheaper than discrete logic. --Chuck
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
On 8/28/20 3:31 PM, Warner Losh wrote: There's some other speed increase (UHS) that comes along with also dropping from 3.3V down to 1.8V. I don't know how to program FPGAs to do that or even know if they can. I thought it was going from SPI mode to MMC mode that did this, not the double clocking nor the 1bit to 4bit bus steps. I knew it wasn't either the double clocking or using all four lanes, I just didn't know what it was called and was too lazy to dig out the SD protocol spec. But now I pulled up the spec and it's saying that it's UHS cards that support the modes that use the lower voltage and there are seven bus speed modes: DS (Default Speed) HS (High Speed) SDR12 SDR25 SDR50 DDR50 SDR104 DS and HS use 3.3V signaling while the SDR and DDR modes use 1.8V. Then UHS-II adds a couple more modes. SPI mode is separate from all of this, something just tossed in there for us hobbyists to play around with.
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 1:14 PM David Bridgham via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On 8/28/20 1:10 PM, Paul Koning wrote: > > > SD is a packet based storage device on a serial interconnect, minimally > one lane wide but it can also be four lanes (and that's typically how you > use it). Apparently it starts out in a SPI compatible mode, interesting. > Also, SD requires a rather complex handshake at power up to get to the > point where you can do I/O. > > > I've implemented the SPI protocol in a little micro-coded engine on an > FPGA and have considered upgrading it to the standard interface over one > to four lanes except it looks like the SD licensing says I'm not > supposed to do that without paying them a bunch of money. And yeah, it > took me a while to work through the initialization dance and it still > fails from time to time (and from SD card to SD card). > > However ... > > > > One oddity I remember from a decade ago is that it has a high speed mode > where the clock speed is doubled. That's not strange. What's strange is > that when you do this, the device switches from clocking data on the rising > edge to clocking on the falling edge, or the other way around, I don't > remember which. Fortunately I wasn't the hardware designer who had to cope > with all that strangeness. > > > ... this I had totally missed. Doubling the clock speed (from 25 to 50 > MHz) would be relatively easy (once I'm not running this over long > ribbon cable) but switching the clock around like that would have really > confused me, I think. Thanks for the heads-up. > > There's some other speed increase (UHS) that comes along with also > dropping from 3.3V down to 1.8V. I don't know how to program FPGAs to > do that or even know if they can. > I thought it was going from SPI mode to MMC mode that did this, not the double clocking nor the 1bit to 4bit bus steps. Warner
Re: Looking for MIPS Magnum R4000 or compatible
Doesn't have to be strictly a MIPS Magnum R4000, just a MIPS R4000 ARC box! Can be a Magnum, a Deskstation, NeTPower, Pica, any of them really. On 8/28/20, Warner Losh wrote: > On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 10:29 AM Sean Ellis via cctalk < > cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > >> Hello all, apparently I've been in this group now for weeks but my >> spam filter thinks it's all spam. Fixed that, I hope. >> >> Does anyone have any leads on a MIPS Magnum R4000 or Jazz-compatible >> machine? I've been working for a while on trying to round out my >> collection of alt-arch WinNT machines, and the Magnum has proven to be >> the most elusive. >> > > I have a DeskStation ARCstation. Not quite Magnum compatible, but ran > WinNT... It has an R4000PC in it, ircc. > > Warner >
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
On 8/28/20 1:10 PM, Paul Koning wrote: SD is a packet based storage device on a serial interconnect, minimally one lane wide but it can also be four lanes (and that's typically how you use it). Apparently it starts out in a SPI compatible mode, interesting. Also, SD requires a rather complex handshake at power up to get to the point where you can do I/O. I've implemented the SPI protocol in a little micro-coded engine on an FPGA and have considered upgrading it to the standard interface over one to four lanes except it looks like the SD licensing says I'm not supposed to do that without paying them a bunch of money. And yeah, it took me a while to work through the initialization dance and it still fails from time to time (and from SD card to SD card). However ... One oddity I remember from a decade ago is that it has a high speed mode where the clock speed is doubled. That's not strange. What's strange is that when you do this, the device switches from clocking data on the rising edge to clocking on the falling edge, or the other way around, I don't remember which. Fortunately I wasn't the hardware designer who had to cope with all that strangeness. ... this I had totally missed. Doubling the clock speed (from 25 to 50 MHz) would be relatively easy (once I'm not running this over long ribbon cable) but switching the clock around like that would have really confused me, I think. Thanks for the heads-up. There's some other speed increase (UHS) that comes along with also dropping from 3.3V down to 1.8V. I don't know how to program FPGAs to do that or even know if they can.
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 11:41 AM Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: > On 8/28/20 10:10 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > > > SD is a packet based storage device on a serial interconnect > You really do need SMART monitoring on solid-state storage > which may or may not exist in the adapters. SSDs will silently > fail if they run out of sectors to write to. > For the PATA to SATA adapters, they exist to the extent the SSD supports them. Smart here is not standardized... but smartmontools has a big enough database to keep you happy... > Also, I discovered recently that there is a maximum number of hours > measured in years on SSDs and systems will start throwing SMART > errors when that is exceeded. I have a few doing that now on systems > with minimal writes but lots of hours. > Interesting... I have several SSDs in the field now that have been powered on for 7 or 8 years... I've not yet seen this behavior, though I do see a few of them die every month due to old age > There are long discussions elsewhere of the dangers of using non-industrial > rated CFs and SDs in storage applications. > Yes. "Only as good as the card you put in." and most of the cards are poo. Though the latter-day CF cards tend to be quite good since they are for high end cameras and tend to use relatively good quality NAND to get the performance those cameras need, endurance goes along for the ride. Most of the issues with CF and SD cards are in continuous use, though, where there's lots of writes and not much idle time for the card to do anything about it and power failures are a lot more common on CF/SD cards with high write loads than for SSDs... Warner
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 11:10 AM Paul Koning via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > On Aug 28, 2020, at 12:15 PM, David Bridgham via cctalk < > cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > > >> in an online search - the CFADPTHD seems like it's close to what I'd > want, > >> except it's Compact Flash; I'd have preferred SD but I guess converting > >> their interface to IDE is more work. > > > > > > Yeah, I think Compact Flash actually uses the IDE protocol just with a > > different form-factor while SD cards are their own thing so a conversion > > from SD to IDE is a whole lot more work. > > Correct. CF cards talk to a SATA controller, you just have to adjust the > pinout. > > SD is a packet based storage device on a serial interconnect, minimally > one lane wide but it can also be four lanes (and that's typically how you > use it). Apparently it starts out in a SPI compatible mode, interesting. > Also, SD requires a rather complex handshake at power up to get to the > point where you can do I/O. > There's a number of SD to PATA adapters though where all this goo is put into a chip and you don't worry too much about it... I've used these and they are as good as the SD card you put in them... Warner
Re: Sun SPARCstation LX boot from CDROM?
On 8/28/2020 9:42 AM, Tom Hunter via cctalk wrote: Now comes the problem - if it try to run from it via "boot cdrom" it doesn't even access the CDROM drive - the LED doesn't turn on unlike when you do the "probe-scsi-all". Thanks and best regards Tom Hunter There's a problem if you are using a Sun branded CD drive. I think they were initially source by Sony, but could be wrong. If you used writable CD's in the day, you would hit a problem because sun mastered their mask CDs with a difference in the default sector size. They and the Sony drive are actually in error, and the writable CD media is conformant to the standards, but Sun left it in there. For over a year people ran around like crazy trying to figure it out, and most just bought the Sun branded drive. The end result was that you wanted a Plextor or Toshiba 3401 or maybe 3501 SCSI drive. They take the order and respond so the boot code doesn't fail till the blocksize is set to I think 2k. If you can find one (unfortunately I've got two in the cabinet here for this reason), you might try that. Those with better sources / memories can correct, I'm relating a problem I recall with CDROM boot from 30 years ago, and I've not gotten my pile out yet to try it again myself. Only thing in your description that doesn't fit my memory that worries me a bit is the failure of your 2.4 media. If it's the Sun mask mastered media that doesn't fit my problem symptoms. Thanks jim
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
I've standardized on, and been happy with these: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000415725711.html There's a lot of vendors that sell them, including on ebay and Amazon. I haven't really had any problem with those adapters, including on native ISA IDE controllers and XT-IDE. There's IDE to CF adapters too, but I find SD cards easier to use and cheaper/easier to get in bulk. Pat On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 12:07 PM Noel Chiappa via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > After having a run of almost half a dozen IDE hard drive failures recently > in > a short period of time (on my older desktops which use them, I've decided > that > I should see if there's an IDE emulator (using SD cards) available I could > switch to. (I'm not sure why I had so many failures in such a short > period; I > can only conclude that they're too old now, and reaching the end of their > service lives. > > So soes anyone have one (or more) they can recommend? (IDE simulators > only; I > don't want to have to mess around changing anything more than I > _absolutely_ > have to)? I did find these guys: > > http://store.mesanet.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=74_64 > > in an online search - the CFADPTHD seems like it's close to what I'd want, > except it's Compact Flash; I'd have preferred SD but I guess converting > their interface to IDE is more work. > > Noel > >
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
On 8/28/20 10:10 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: SD is a packet based storage device on a serial interconnect You really do need SMART monitoring on solid-state storage which may or may not exist in the adapters. SSDs will silently fail if they run out of sectors to write to. Also, I discovered recently that there is a maximum number of hours measured in years on SSDs and systems will start throwing SMART errors when that is exceeded. I have a few doing that now on systems with minimal writes but lots of hours. There are long discussions elsewhere of the dangers of using non-industrial rated CFs and SDs in storage applications.
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
On 8/28/20 9:07 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote: After having a run of almost half a dozen IDE hard drive failures recently in a short period of time what brand/model drives have been failing?
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
> On Aug 28, 2020, at 12:15 PM, David Bridgham via cctalk > wrote: > > >> in an online search - the CFADPTHD seems like it's close to what I'd want, >> except it's Compact Flash; I'd have preferred SD but I guess converting >> their interface to IDE is more work. > > > Yeah, I think Compact Flash actually uses the IDE protocol just with a > different form-factor while SD cards are their own thing so a conversion > from SD to IDE is a whole lot more work. Correct. CF cards talk to a SATA controller, you just have to adjust the pinout. SD is a packet based storage device on a serial interconnect, minimally one lane wide but it can also be four lanes (and that's typically how you use it). Apparently it starts out in a SPI compatible mode, interesting. Also, SD requires a rather complex handshake at power up to get to the point where you can do I/O. One oddity I remember from a decade ago is that it has a high speed mode where the clock speed is doubled. That's not strange. What's strange is that when you do this, the device switches from clocking data on the rising edge to clocking on the falling edge, or the other way around, I don't remember which. Fortunately I wasn't the hardware designer who had to cope with all that strangeness. paul
Re: Looking for MIPS Magnum R4000 or compatible
On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 10:29 AM Sean Ellis via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > Hello all, apparently I've been in this group now for weeks but my > spam filter thinks it's all spam. Fixed that, I hope. > > Does anyone have any leads on a MIPS Magnum R4000 or Jazz-compatible > machine? I've been working for a while on trying to round out my > collection of alt-arch WinNT machines, and the Magnum has proven to be > the most elusive. > I have a DeskStation ARCstation. Not quite Magnum compatible, but ran WinNT... It has an R4000PC in it, ircc. Warner
Sun SPARCstation LX boot from CDROM?
About 20 years ago I rescued a fully working Sun SPARCstation LX with CDROM and QIC-150 tape drive - all 3 in lunchbox format - plus monitor when we moved office and management decided they no longer wanted/needed it. Shortly after I have installed an early version of NetBSD (1.3.3) from the CDROM drive. I played with it for a few days and then stored the entire system in a museum grade glass display cabinet. This is indoors with minimal dust and benign temperatures between 18 degrees C to about 28 degrees C (typical room temperatures here in Perth in Western Australia unless you run the air conditioner). Now retired I took the stack of "lunch-boxes" and the CRT monitor out of the display cabinet and powered it up. After 20 years no smoke came out but the system didn't boot but reported trouble with the NVRAM setting. I still could start NetBSD using a "boot disk" command. I googled the problem and bought and installed a replacement TIMEKEEPER chip (M48T08-100). After defaulting the settings and setting the MAC address and machine ID it was happy and booted from disk without intervention. In NetBSD I then set the date and time and all was good. Then I decided to upgrade to the latest version of the SPARC version of NetBSD 9.0. I downloaded and burned the ISO image to CD. Dropped it into a CD caddy and inserted it into the CDROM drive (SUN Model 411 - really a Sony CDU-8012 3.1e). I did a "probe-scsi-all" and it found both the hard drive and the CDROM (target 6 unit 0). Now comes the problem - if it try to run from it via "boot cdrom" it doesn't even access the CDROM drive - the LED doesn't turn on unlike when you do the "probe-scsi-all". The "cdrom" alias is really: "/iommu/sbus/espdma@4,840/esp@4 ,880/sd@6,0:d". The "disk" alias is really: "/iommu/sbus/espdma@4,840/esp@4,880/sd@3,0" The "@3" versus the "@6" are the SCSI IDs of the disk drive versus the CDROM. I don't know what the trailing bits mean. I tried cdrom aliases from "sd@6,0:0" to "sd@6,0:f" and all report: Can't read disk label Can't open disk label package Can't open boot device The LED doesn't blink even once unless I remove and re-insert the caddy with the CDROM media or if I do a "probe-scsi" or "probe-scsi-all". I tried original Sun Solaris 2.4 installation media with the exact same result/symptoms. I also tried to access the CDROM from NetBSD using "cat /dev/cd0a" but the drive's LED didn't blink and I got an obscure error message. The Boot ROM revision is reported as 2.9. The system was bought about 1985 or 1986 and has seen very little use. I searched google without success. Maybe I used the wrong search terms or the equipment is just getting too old and FAQs have disappeared. What would cause the CDROM boot problem? There is a chance that the actual Sony drive died. I partially disassembled it hoping to find dust stuck on the LASER optics but it was nice and clean. The positioning and ejection mechanisms work just fine. The whole system was working before I put it into my relatively dust proof glass display cabinet. Thanks and best regards Tom Hunter
Brittle plastic
Today I was working on a very nice 1995 vintage SPARCstation LX with CDROM and QIC-150 tape drive (3 lunchbox type units). I was trying to install a newer version of NetBSD on it than was already installed. The stack of 3 units was stored in a museum grade glass display cabinet. Sadly all 3 units have a small degree of yellowing but more importantly the plastic cases have become very brittle and bits just break off with minimal mechanical strain. Is there any process to reverse the brittleness which could be used to preserve the cases? Thanks Tom Hunter
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
Check to see if JMicron's sata(drive) to ide(host) is suitable to your need. They also come with bi-directional switch to select which end goes to the mainboard. ypu can connect a big ssd or a sata to M2 adapter. But be aware they have two problems: - they need +5V power supply, either from the fdd connector or from USB; - they do not get along with Sun Ultrasparc systems: the sata hdd is always read-only. You can also get a pci sata controller. On Friday, August 28, 2020, Warner Losh via cctalk wrote: > On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 10:19 AM Al Kossow via cctalk < > cctalk@classiccmp.org> > wrote: > > > On 8/28/20 9:07 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote: > > > I've decided that > > > I should see if there's an IDE emulator (using SD cards) available I > > could > > > switch to. > > You may want to use PATA disk-on-module. > > > > There's also a crap-ton of SATA<->PATA adapters that I've used to good > effect everywhere except in space constrained situations (think laptop). > > Warner >
Looking for MIPS Magnum R4000 or compatible
Hello all, apparently I've been in this group now for weeks but my spam filter thinks it's all spam. Fixed that, I hope. Does anyone have any leads on a MIPS Magnum R4000 or Jazz-compatible machine? I've been working for a while on trying to round out my collection of alt-arch WinNT machines, and the Magnum has proven to be the most elusive. Thanks
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 10:19 AM Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: > On 8/28/20 9:07 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote: > > I've decided that > > I should see if there's an IDE emulator (using SD cards) available I > could > > switch to. > You may want to use PATA disk-on-module. > There's also a crap-ton of SATA<->PATA adapters that I've used to good effect everywhere except in space constrained situations (think laptop). Warner
RE: michael Holley?
I need advice on a path forward then. From emails I got from Michael, Bill Dawson gave him authority over both swtpc.com and swtpc.org. Originally, Bill Dawson had swtpc.com but Michael was managing/uploading much of the content there under the mholley subdirectory (www.swtpc.com/mholley). Michael registered swtpc.org and I set that as a redirect to the subdirectory on swtpc.com. Michael stated that at some point the sites would be merged and he would be the sole site maintainer. So now I am hosting swtpc.com and swtpc.org, and ownership of the site is up in the air. Whoever owns swtpc.com doesn't have an A record, which effectively kills off swtpc.org (redirect fails) as well. All that good content (and there's a fair amount) is no longer accessible. I see herb johnson ripped the site and has a copy over at deramp, but no clue if that is a complete copy that descended from Bill or Mikes wishes. My initial plan - since I have no registrar access to swtpc.com and it doesn't point to my name servers, nothing I can do. But swtpc.org at least still, is pointing to my nameservers. I will change the apache config from a redirect to the real contents (but not sure if it should bring up the content that was swtpc.com or swtpc.org). At least a real site will be up. That being said, I am moving the sites I host free from one server to another. That project is ongoing the past few days. I would like to move swtpc.* as well, but see above. If someone has a reasonably cogent claim to the content I would hand the site (both) to them. If it's long been gone and other copies are complete and commonly used, then I could just delete it but hesitant to do so. I would like to decommission the old server but this should be resolved first. Feel free to send me advice/thoughts/claims/rants off-list. J
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
On 8/28/20 9:07 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote: I've decided that I should see if there's an IDE emulator (using SD cards) available I could switch to. You may want to use PATA disk-on-module.
Re: Looking for an IDE simulator
> in an online search - the CFADPTHD seems like it's close to what I'd want, > except it's Compact Flash; I'd have preferred SD but I guess converting > their interface to IDE is more work. Yeah, I think Compact Flash actually uses the IDE protocol just with a different form-factor while SD cards are their own thing so a conversion from SD to IDE is a whole lot more work. Although, I did find these so I guess you're not the first to want this: https://www.amazon.com/40Pin-Male-Hard-Drive-Adapter/dp/B01ANIQNK4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076597T9H/ref=dp_prsubs_1 https://www.newegg.com/syba-sd-cf-ide-br-ide-to-compact-flash/p/N82E16812186002?Description=ide%20to%20sd%20adapter&cm_re=ide_to%20sd%20adapter-_-12-186-002-_-Product&quicklink=true https://www.newegg.com/syba-sd-cf-ide-di-ide-to-compact-flash/p/N82E16822998003?Description=ide%20to%20sd%20adapter&cm_re=ide_to%20sd%20adapter-_-22-998-003-_-Product https://www.newegg.com/syba-sd-ada45006-ide-to-compact-flash/p/N82E16812186098?Description=ide%20to%20sd%20adapter&cm_re=ide_to%20sd%20adapter-_-12-186-098-_-Product&quicklink=true
Looking for an IDE simulator
After having a run of almost half a dozen IDE hard drive failures recently in a short period of time (on my older desktops which use them, I've decided that I should see if there's an IDE emulator (using SD cards) available I could switch to. (I'm not sure why I had so many failures in such a short period; I can only conclude that they're too old now, and reaching the end of their service lives. So soes anyone have one (or more) they can recommend? (IDE simulators only; I don't want to have to mess around changing anything more than I _absolutely_ have to)? I did find these guys: http://store.mesanet.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=74_64 in an online search - the CFADPTHD seems like it's close to what I'd want, except it's Compact Flash; I'd have preferred SD but I guess converting their interface to IDE is more work. Noel
Re: More interesting stuff
On 8/27/20 4:17 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote: On 8/26/2020 7:11 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctech wrote: Found a few other items that might be of interest to someone. Two DEC Mice VS10X-EA Rev A3 DEC Joystick Model H3060 bill Where did you see the H3060 Joystick? In my pile of old DEC stuff. bill
