Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

Nice work, indeed! The clearance issue is part of why I made the repair module boards. Thanks, Jonathan On Wed, Dec 5, 2018 at 9:54 AM Maciej W. Rozycki via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On Sun, 2 Dec 2018, Jeffrey S. Worley via cctalk wrote: > > > The re-work of that Dallas nvram chi

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

On Sun, 2 Dec 2018, Jeffrey S. Worley via cctalk wrote: > The re-work of that Dallas nvram chip is just beautiful. It makes me > ashamed of myself. (I just chopped into the epoxy with a pocket knife, > soldered two leads, and velcroed the new batteries somewhere inside the > machine I installed

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

The re-work of that Dallas nvram chip is just beautiful. It makes me ashamed of myself. (I just chopped into the epoxy with a pocket knife, soldered two leads, and velcroed the new batteries somewhere inside the machine I installed it in.) I salute you sir. Jeff

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

On Sat, 1 Dec 2018, alan--- via cctalk wrote: > I'm not sure what the 'B' in the middle means (silicon rev?), but the DS12885 > has been around for decades. I use them the JR-IDE project. Yes, the DS12885 is a standard part, still in production (with a trailing + marking RoHS compliance). Ac

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

I'm not sure what the 'B' in the middle means (silicon rev?), but the DS12885 has been around for decades. I use them the JR-IDE project. -Alan On 2018-12-01 17:47, Maciej W. Rozycki via cctalk wrote: On Tue, 27 Nov 2018, systems_glitch via cctalk wrote: I probably need to do a writeup o

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

On Tue, 27 Nov 2018, systems_glitch via cctalk wrote: > I probably need to do a writeup on fully potted parts, like the 48T59 and > DS1287. See a photo documentary here: for my proposal of a DS1287 rework. I actually had a nasty s

Re: NVRAM resuscitation (Was Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD)

DEC had some employees with clearances all the way up both primary sides of the classification ladder, General Service (GENSER, which includes some "black" programs), and Special Compartmented Intelligence (SCI, which has its own alphabet soup, including other kinds of "black" programs). They need

Re: NVRAM resuscitation (Was Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD)

> On Nov 28, 2018, at 9:43 AM, Ethan via cctalk wrote: > >> As an aside - once upon a time I worked for a company that made their own >> Sparc boards to fit inside a supercomputer and several of them were inside >> secure military/government establishments. Sometimes a board would fail and

Re: NVRAM resuscitation (Was Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD)

As an aside - once upon a time I worked for a company that made their own Sparc boards to fit inside a supercomputer and several of them were inside secure military/government establishments. Sometimes a board would fail and have to go back for a fix - and then the RTC/NVRAM chip had to be remov

Re: NVRAM resuscitation (Was Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD)

As an aside - once upon a time I worked for a company that made their own Sparc boards to fit inside a supercomputer and several of them were inside secure military/government establishments. Sometimes a board would fail and have to go back for a fix - and then the RTC/NVRAM chip had to be r

Re: NVRAM resuscitation (Was Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD)

On 11/27/2018 03:34 PM, Jeffrey S. Worley via cctalk wrote: > When I bought that Sparcstation 4/330 at Computer Parts Barn, the 48T02 > was one of the problems with it. The chip looks like a piggieback rom > encapsulated in epoxy. > > I was not reinventing the wheel at the time, I think, because i

Re: NVRAM resuscitation (Was Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD)

I'd modified them as Jeff described in the past, but having the repair boards saves significant time when doing a bunch. It also allows non-precision cuts, since it doesn't matter if you accidentally destroy the old connections down to the IC body. It also results in a repaired module with no batte

Re: NVRAM resuscitation (Was Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD)

One reason that I buy the new NVRAMs is that I keep failing at modifying them. Got the polarity wrong and fried one. I destroyed one cutting down to the terminals. I got one working, but have had problems convincing the battery to stay in place and not rip the leads off. There is a reason I am

NVRAM resuscitation (Was Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD)

When I bought that Sparcstation 4/330 at Computer Parts Barn, the 48T02 was one of the problems with it. The chip looks like a piggieback rom encapsulated in epoxy. I was not reinventing the wheel at the time, I think, because it was the year 2000 or so, but I looked for a replacement and found t

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 10:44 AM Kyle Owen via cctalk wrote: > Does anyone have a 3/60 hard disk image of SunOS 3.4 or 3.5, by chance? I'll check. I was playing with TME earlier this year but I'm forgetting which version of SunOS I was working on. I had a need to test out some ancient SunOS m68

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

On Sun, Nov 25, 2018 at 9:50 PM wrote: > > Ah cool. I was at a friend's brother's house on a work trip out to Silicon > Valley. One of his friends was there, with something amazing running in > QEMU. It was a work in progress, but he said that there were a lot of > issues because QEMU was too acc

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

For fully potted parts like the 48T59, I make four cuts along the sides of the encapsulation, on the short ends I cut until I hit metal (pins coming up from the IC to the crystal/battery). On the long ends I just cut deep enough to get through the pot shell and into the potting compound a little. T

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

On 11/26/18 2:42 PM, systems_glitch via cctalk wrote: > I'm not sure, I don't personally see it as something worthwhile to > investigate when you can just rebuild the old NVRAMs. What is the best way to decap 28 pin parts? 24-pin ones come apart pretty easily but they don't leave a gap on the 2

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

I'm not sure, I don't personally see it as something worthwhile to investigate when you can just rebuild the old NVRAMs. Even if you do use a SNAPHAT type replacement, you're still stuck with proprietary batteries that will one day no longer be made, versus an extremely common CR1225 cell. I've mad

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

Also, to anyone buying NVRAMs on eBay, don't expect anything from China to actually be new NVRAMs. I've bought a bunch to disassemble, in the course Are any of the SMD NVRAMs with the battery caps compatible? Throw them on a DIP to SOIC PCB? - Ethan -- : Ethan O'Tool

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

> Don't have any spare modules? What happened to the half dozen that I sent you? :) In the queue somewhere! They'll likely go to replace the modules I'd stolen from other machines over the years, as I get around to fixing them. Also, to anyone buying NVRAMs on eBay, don't expect anything from Chi

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

On 11/26/18 2:08 PM, systems_glitch wrote: I don't have any spare modules to rebuild, so I don't have premade replacements up at the moment. I've been rebuilding them for people when they send in their dead modules, but I'd guess most people here can do the rebuild themselves, time permit

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

They're still made, but the new ones don't always work in place of the old ones -- not 100% anyway. It's been my experience that, on sun4c and sun4m, new 48T02s and 48T08s aren't 100% compatible. I've mentioned others' suggestions on what the differences are in my Tindie listings, and on the writeu

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

On 11/25/18 7:49 PM, Ethan via cctalk wrote: The NVRAM is totally dead; I've been reloading the IDPROM contents each time. I've already ordered replacement NVRAMs from China; we'll see how they do. Otherwise, I'll be going with the filing/coin cell trick. Interesting. Are they no longer m

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

I was hoping to just emulate it for now to avoid potentially bad hardware, but seems like I need to use the real hardware to avoid potentially bad software! :) Ah cool. I was at a friend's brother's house on a work trip out to Silicon Valley. One of his friends was there, with something amazing

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

On Sun, Nov 25, 2018 at 9:14 PM wrote: > Since you said QEMU, you are emulating this? If on the real hardware, is > the NVRAM memory dead? Looks like it doesn't know what kind of hardware it > is. Real hardware will loose nvram battery and need to be replaced and > reprogrammed, or you can file i

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

Well, got the last problem solved rather quickly: I tried using 512 byte sectors for the emulated CDROM instead of SCSI2SD's default of 2048 for a CDROM, and that did the trick. Working my way through the SunOS 4.1.3 installation process now on the SS-20. Was just thinking the 512 byte thing mig

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

Well, got the last problem solved rather quickly: I tried using 512 byte sectors for the emulated CDROM instead of SCSI2SD's default of 2048 for a CDROM, and that did the trick. Working my way through the SunOS 4.1.3 installation process now on the SS-20. > If anyone has some advice on how to get

SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

Firstly, my goal: to run MazeWar on something other than a NeXT. I thought this would be fairly straightforward, starting with getting SunOS 4.1.3 booting with QEMU. Turns out, I've not had much luck. I get different error messages depending on what machine type I'm emulating. I can start booting