3 Apr
2005
3 Apr
'05
8:01 a.m.
[Sun 4/330 with bit 6 broken on console serial]
Chances are I'll be looking for a new board (yeah,
right!) given the
lack of schematics. Other alternative would be to find a framebuffer
board for the machine and then use a graphical console - it might be
easier to find a compatible framebuffer versus a whole new 4/330
board...
Another possibility, if the board has another serial-port chip (eg,
many Suns have one chip for ttya/ttyb and another for keyboard/mouse)
is to cut the chip enable connections and swap them. If the rest of
the pins are bussed in parallel, this could then move console serial
onto the other chip, which may work. (If it's mouse/keyboard, you
likely will need a level shifter, but based on my experiences with
later SPARCs, that's all you'll need; I've put keyboards on stock
serial ports with a level shifter and an inverter, and I think I even
did the converse once.)
Of course, it also could break things totally if the other signals
aren't simply bussed.
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