🚀 go-pugleaf

In <35aad4f7.48307890@news.pipeline.com> pcmedix@pipeline.com (Richard Ross) writes:

>I've been looking over this group for the past couple of days, and you
>look like the guys I might be able to bore with my pitifulness! I own
>a small PC repair shop, and have always wanted a Sun, and guess what?
>Now I have a piece of one and am LOST!

>What I have is a Sun Sparc 2, of unknown original origin, that was
>purchased from an auctioneer. The unit has a G6 video adapter (frame
>buffer?) and not much else.

That would be the cg6 (aka GX) colour framebuffer. It's an 8-bit,
vector-accelerated framebuffer, which is good if you're going to use it with
something like X-Windows (or Sun's supplied OpenWindows).

> There was what appears to be a 1M 30-pin
>SIMM in the first SIMM slot. 

With just a single SIMM (they should be installed in groups of 4) it won't
do much. You can use either 1 meg or 4 meg 30 pin parity SIMM's rated at 80
ns or faster. Try to stick to the same type and speed of SIMM in each bank.

>I've gone over the hardware guide I found
>at www.sunhelp.com, and am not sure if the banks are consecutive or
>interleaved.

They are interleaved, in this order:


    SCSI connectors

       3       3
       1       1
       2       2
       0       0

       3       3
       1       1
       2       2
       0       0

    Sbus connectors


(looking from the back of the machine)

> The machine has no hard drive, monitor, or keyboard. I
>would just like to know how to tell if the box is worth buying some
>parts to get it up and going. I've installed 4 9-pin 80ns 1M SIMMS
>consecutively (one above the other) to try and power the system up and
>check for signs of life. The power supply LED works (!) and the floppy
>light comes on, but I get nothing from the speaker.

Try ordering them as shown above for bank 0 and you should get some life
from the machine. 

With no monitor, you can connect a serial terminal to port A (set for 9600
bps) and the machine will use that as it's console. All Sun machines do that
as a fallback measure when there's no keyboard.

> Should I get any
>type of POST beeps, etc.? I attempted to use a terminal-emulating PC
>connected to the com A port of the Sparc in several different terminal
>configurations, with no signs of life, other than occasionally slowing
>the terminal display. I tried with a null modem, and the motherboard
>jumpers were set to RS-232, but I really don't know what to expect or
>do here, either. I feel like such a virgin around this thing! Is there
>anything I can do to check for definite signs of life?

With the RAM installed as it is now, the power-on self tests will fail and
the machine won't start up at all. That's probably why you're not seeing
anything on the terminal. Once the RAM arrangement is fixed, things should
work enough for you to see the bootROM kick in.

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.zeta.org.au/~craig/srk'