1 Apr
2005
1 Apr
'05
4:29 a.m.
On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 11:21 +0100, Witchy wrote:
While clearing out the soon-to-be dining room where
all my stuff has been
stored for the last couple of years I found a Sparc5 that I'd completely
forgotten about. It's been completely robbed of bits that I can see -
memory, floppy drive, CD, HDD - so what's the minimum I can get away with
before at least powering it up to see if it works? The only spare memory
I've got is PC100 (may even be PC66) 168-pin DIMMS.
Hmm, I've got a feeling the memory's different - PC memory works at a
different voltage to Sparc memory.
Can I use a serial console on it or do I need a 13w3
monitor cable?
It'll work fine with a serial console. Can't remember what connectors
the Sparc 5 has though - some Suns have high density connectors and you
need a little adapter to convert to 'normal' ports.
Easiest thing to do is chop a Sun monitor cable and a PC VGA cable in
half and make up a cable so you can connect to a PC display.
HDD looks like it's a standard SCA-80 connection
Yep, nothing special there. You might need slimline drives to fit the
drive bays (around 1" high) rather than the taller (1.5" or so) drives.
I'm sure I've got a spare CDROM drive you can use. Deffo got spare 2GB
slimline SCA drives.
Can't remember if the floppy drive is SCSI on these or not - it's pretty
rare to see any Sun with a floppy fitted anyway.
....keyboard and mouse are there but I hope I
don't need one of those
foil mousemats!
Should be obvious from the underside of the mouse whether it's an
optical one or not :)
Memory's likely a problem. I can lend you some from one of the pile of
BP Suns if you want though, or take your machine in and try it out...
cheers
Jules