Hello, I already got in contact to computinghistory as well as CHM.
The don‘t have anything beside the Sparcbook 2 artifacts they a publishing on their websites Andreas > Am 08.06.2025 um 19:03 schrieb Adrian Godwin via cctalk > <[email protected]>: > > Tadpole were in Cambridge, weren't they ? > https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/ have collected a fair bit of > Cambridge history. I haven't found them very willing to search their > archives but there may be individuals who have more time available, or > they may have a resource problem in putting information online. > >> On Fri, Jun 6, 2025 at 8:28 AM erik--- via cctalk <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >> >> >> Hi Andreas, >> >> great that there are still some people looking into the >> old SPARCbooks from Tadpole. I have got a 3GX up and running. >> >>> Sadly there seems to be almost no documentation available >>> in the net for a Sparcbook 2 >> >> Yeah, that is really sad. Also do not have got any information! >> Just to report from my work on the 3 series ones (which are >> probably not to different from the earlier ones): >> >> Mine works without battery pack, so there is some intelligence >> in the battery pack (for power management), but using a power >> supply it is working even without that pack! >> >>> - after trying to reboot the unit will be almost dead. >>> While pressing the power on button the LEDs on the left >>> upper side of the display will >>> be lit shortly, but nothing else will happen. >> >> Hmm, that sounds strange and I never observed this due to >> lost NVram values. But what I observed is the yellow/orange >> Tantalum caps going bad in the small power supply piggy back >> PCB inside the unit. A short prevents the notebook from >> working (and sometimes even some inductors release smoke and >> completely destroyong the PCB depending on which cap went >> short). >> After a longer time powered off, the faulty cap can recover >> explaining your observation. Fortunately I had some spare >> PCBs and replaced all caps in my live one which works nicely >> now... >> >> Good luck, >> >> Erik. >>
