🚀 go-pugleaf

In <53vvai$fcd@news.stlnet.com> root@I_should_put_my_domain_in_etc_NNTP_INEWS_DOMAIN (root) writes:

>This system is a single card with a daughterboard(?) that I believe to be a
>video card. It has 4 coax/ethernet appearing ports on that board lable
>R,G,B, and S.

That's the colour frame buffer. 'R', 'G', and 'B' are the colour gun drive
signals, with 'S' being the sync signal. The standard Sun display size is
1152 x 900, running at about 63 kHz horizontal and 66 Hz vertical. Most
17" and larger multisync monitors will work with the output of a Sun
colour frame buffer. 

>I unslotted the board and found 4 SIMM banks, each having 8 slots. Two of the
>banks (1 and 3) were filled with 256k simms.  Everything I have found on this 
>machine points to a configuration with all 4 banks filled, is this a problem?

The 4/110 supports 4 different SIMM configurations. Part 3 of James
Birdsall's Sun Hardware Reference has all the information on how to fill
the board with memory. You can use 256 k and/or 1 meg 30-pin SIMM's in
varying combinations, but 1 meg SIMM's are recommended, because they are
cheap, and more standardised than their older 256k cousins. 

>When I connect serial a to a terminal and boot in diagnostics mode, it runs
>a series of tests. One of them is a memtest, which it reports having 8mb of
>ram... However it only has 4 physically... Then it gets to a MMU test and
>spams errors.

4 meg is not a standard supported configuration for a 4/1xx. On 4/1xx
boards, the mem configuration is set by the two big banks of jumpers on
the RHS of the SIMM sockets. The bootrom works out what configuration the
machine is set for using these, instead of actually probing the RAM. The
hardware reference has info on this. 

>    Am I correct in assuming that the other 2 banks must be filled?
>Also, noting the lack of built in storage, would that make the OS chip-based?
>I am new to this sun stuff, so that probobly sounds like a dumb question.

You don't have to fill all 4 banks. One of the standard configurations is 
16 meg of 1 meg SIMM's, which fills 2 banks.

The OS isn't ROM-based, although like all other Sun's the roms contain a
forth-based monitor which does all sorts of things, including being able
to boot SunOS off an external device. Normally this will be a SCSI drive. 

>I have read the sun hardware FAQ, but it seems to take for granted that your
>machine is currently in a working order :}

It contains enough info for you to fix up the jumper settings and at least
get the machine through the self-tests and into the ROM monitor, which 
will mean the hardware is working properly. 

Regards,

Craig.
-- 
        Craig Dewick - craig@zeta.org.au - http://www.zeta.org.au/~craig  
            Professional Train Driver. Located in Sydney, Australia.
          Sun Ripened Kernels - http://www.zeta.org.au/~craig/srk.html
                Surplus and pre-loved Sun Microsystems equipment.