14 Jul
2005
14 Jul
'05
12:09 a.m.
10.4 does not include the SAU's for the very early machines.
I think mine run SR 9.7.5, which supports the DN660 and DN330's as
well as the 3xxx and 4xxx boxes.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jules Richardson" <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2005 8:21 AM
Subject: Re: Apollo stuff
On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 12:37 +0100, Simon Fryer wrote:
Agreed! I haven't tested all our earlier Apollos yet anyway, so it's
possible that one might be beyond repair and so become a spare machine -
freeing up a keyboard (I've not tried an early-style Domain keyboard on
a later 4xx machine yet though; electrically they're compatible but I
don't know if the protocol's the same)
The wall boxes are just fancy make before break
connection boxes. The
ring works fine without them.
That's good to hear :)
We're
still short a Domain keyboard here, and I think we only have one
of the little interface cables that connects the network cabling to the
token ring card itself - hopefully there's nothing special to those
though and we can make something up. I'd just like to know if it's
vital
to find the wall boxes though! :-)
Most of the Apollo range happily talk to a serial console so a
screen/keyboard isn't really necessary. However in my not so humble
opinion, I am yet to see anything that is anywhere near as nice as the
GUI. . From memory, they also boot happily across
Ethernet. Although, 12Mb/s
Token ring is far nicer then 10Mb/s CSMA/CD.
I've got a feeling that the earlier 3000-era machines don't have
Ethernet as standard anyway (although a card could be added, but I have
no idea what boards the OS would recognise). Using the ATR would seem
like the way to go to make a little domain, with one of the later 4xx
machines that also has an Ethernet interface being used to get to the
outside world.
Memory's perhaps going to be a problem though - I think a couple of our
earlier machines are running rather short on RAM (and of course they're
proprietary modules) - 10.4's the only OS release we have, which might
not run on a memory-starved machine...
cheers
Jules