On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 11:21 +0100, Witchy wrote: Hmm, I've got a feeling the memory's different - PC memory works at a different voltage to Sparc memory. 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. 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. 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

On Apr 1, 2005 5:21 AM, Witchy <witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk> wrote: I think barely. You will need one stick of SPARC5 memory... it's +5V, not +3.3V (the notches are in a different place, so it's not possible to install the wrong kind without forcing it). I don't know for certain if it's compatible, but some models of Mac used 5V DIMMS, and some models of PS/2s. In any case, real SS5 8MB DIMMs should be at a discard price, because everyone wants a full boat of 256MB worth of 32MB DIMMs. You can use the console port on any SPARCstation. Start off by not plugging in the keyboard. If you don't get any response, it's _possible_ that the NVRAM settings are forcing the machine to go to the frame buffer, but unlikely. I _think_ powering it up as a test with the NVRAM removed would force it to defaults, but with the exception of older Suns with dead NVRAMs, I haven't tried that. The drive connectors _are_ 80-pin SCA connectors. You will need a way to mechanically secure the drive in the bay. For thermal reasons, if you can get away with one internal drive, you probably should. There is a clear perspex bracket with a handle that locks the drive in place, but in reality, anything you can devise to keep the drive from moving about should be good. For a test, of course, when the machine doesn't have to tolerate being moved about, resting the drive in the bay, perhaps on a non-conductive shim would be adequate. Depending on which case you have, either you would need a slim-line internal CD-ROM or a full-height CD-ROM. If you use an external CD-ROM (set to device 6) that can handle 512 bytes-per-block mode (Plextor, Hitachi, Sony all made them. ISTR Mac 1X and 2X CD-ROM drives will work), you won't have to worry about how large the CD-ROM drive bay is. Don't worry about floppies... you don't boot from them, and with an ethernet interface, they are rarely needed for interchange. I don't know what the status of older versions of Solaris is, but around Solaris 8, Sun made downloads available. I'm sure there are folks on the list that could help with that. Since the SS5 is a sun4m architecture, you are stuck at Solaris 9 and below. There are also BSDs and Linux, etc. for it. I personally prefer to run Solaris on Sun hardware, but if you are big into some other flavor of UNIX, that _is_ an option. You only need a gridded mousepad for a Sun optical mouse (there are two flavors and two styles of pad, BTW), but Sun also sold balled mice. If all you want to do is test it, a single 8MB stick of the right sort of memory, and a DB25 console cable should do the trick. The rest of the goodies I've mentioned are helpful once you get past that stage. -ethan

At 11:21 AM +0100 4/1/05, Witchy wrote: The bad news is that the memory it requires is specific to the Sparc 5 (*maybe* the Sparc 4 might use the same RAM, I can't rememeber). Either, I typically run Suns with a serial console. Yes, though you'll want one that runs as cool as possible. Depends, is the mouse mechanical, or optical. If it's optical I'd personally junk it and get a mechanical mouse. I assume some people like the optical mice. To the best of my knowledge you can use ones from a 4 or 20. Realistically I don't see need for the floppy drive. I don't think I've ever used one on a Sparc. You might want to take a look at getting a dual CPU Sparc 20 rather than reviving a Sparc 5. If the memory for a Sparc 5 is still up there like it used to be 2-3 years ago, a loaded 20 might be cheaper! Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |