Dan> But unless you get an old microvax running ultrix, vaxen run Dan> better with vms. If you want to run unix cheaply you are better Dan> off with an older Sun or HP machine, you can get these cheap Dan> (less then 100) from ebay. Also you get the choice of running Dan> *bsd as well. You can also get sgi machines cheaply but the os Dan> is harder to come by. You can run 2BSD on a PDP11, or 4BSD on a VAX. Sure, Sun will do too, but DEC machines were the original targets for the BSD systems, I believe -- and certainly either should work well. paul

On Apr 7, 2005 8:53 PM, Scott Stevens <chenmel at earthlink.net> wrote: Agreed, but if one has a source of 32MB (not 16MB) parity 72-pin SIMMs (36-bits), a pair of them goes nicely in a SPARCclassic or LX, along with 4 16MB 36-bit 72-pin SIMMs to load up the box to the max 96MB, a respectable amount if one is not running X. IPXs, IPCs, SPARC1s, etc., all suffer from one weakness... dead or dying NVRAM batteries. There are answers in the Sun NVRAM FAQ, but one does have to be aware of the issue before the machine comes up inert (FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF MAC address) one day. -ethan

On Apr 8, 2005 3:42 AM, C Fernandez <fernande at internet1.net> wrote: I gave my battery replacement a little twist... when I broke the connections between the battery and the underlying chip, I attached a 9V battery lead to the chip in place of the factory battery. I then soldered on a PC-mount 3V Li cell (3032?) onto a former 9V battery top. I did it that way so I could replace the battery again later without having to solder at the chip a second time. I did a similar trick when I was faced with a dead Dallas DS1287 clock/SRAM. Used the same Li cell, too, for the test. -ethan

On Apr 8, 2005 10:30 AM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote: I don't suppose there's anywhere online with a very simple illustrated step-by-step guide on how to do this, is there? My IPX is dead, I can just about solder without burning myself - on a good day - and I'd love to fix it. -- Liam Proven Home: http://welcome.to/liamsweb * Blog: http://lproven.livejournal.com AOL, Yahoo UK: liamproven * ICQ: 73187508 * MSN: lproven at hotmail.com

On Apr 8, 2005 1:45 PM, Mike Loewen <mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us> wrote: Wow! Excellent, thankyou. I was going on the info from obsolyte.com before, which says there's no way except to replace the chip. OTOH, the doc to which you refer does say he doesn't think it's worth it, and given the complexity of reprogramming the NVRAM alone, I am inclined to agree. Anyone want a free SPARCstation IPX? I think it's an IPX. Lunchbox type, as they call it. I need its keyboard & mouse but I can provide a 21" mono monitor as well... I also have a bag of 4MB 9-pin parity SIMMs for it, which I've never got round to installing, to take its RAM up to 48MB or so, which I think it the max it will take. Located in London, England. Mitcham, Surrey, to be precise. -- Liam Proven Home: http://welcome.to/liamsweb * Blog: http://lproven.livejournal.com AOL, Yahoo UK: liamproven * ICQ: 73187508 * MSN: lproven at hotmail.com

Liam Proven wrote: That's what I was talking about before. The nvram faq pretty much discourages against replacing the battery. I think it's the best route to go. Reprogramming the nvram did take a little time, but I figured that I was better off having done it, than not. Besides even if you bought a new chip, you'd still have to program that chip. But from what I've read, and the faq even mentions I think, the newer nvrams don't work right for a lot of people in IPX's. The currently produced nvrams are a bit different..... faster for one. Read this page too. It's the one I read while replacing my battery. http://www.bhargavaz.net/nvram/nvram.html Chad Fernandez Michigan, USA

On Apr 8, 2005 6:24 PM, C Fernandez <fernande at internet1.net> wrote: Thanks for the additional information. It still looks a little hairy to me - I have next to no experience with component-level microelectronics. Board swaps are more my level. Also, I have a somewhat newer Nextra Ultra machine now, and the objective was for me to learn a little about Solaris, preferably on its native SPARC platform... -- Liam Proven Home: http://welcome.to/liamsweb * Blog: http://lproven.livejournal.com AOL, Yahoo UK: liamproven * ICQ: 73187508 * MSN: lproven at hotmail.com

On Apr 8, 2005 6:24 PM, C Fernandez <fernande at internet1.net> wrote: Hmm.. not sure I like the idea of soldering to a lithium cell (I think Tony mentioned it was a bad idea, too). I used a lithium cell holder (PCB mounting) and glued it to the top of the NVRAM. I also have much better photos (in focus, no less!). -- John Honniball coredump at gifford.co.uk

Liam Proven wrote: I did a couple of Sun NVRAM battery fixes (a while ago now) and I took digital photos. If there's interest in seeing how to do it, I can put up a web page. I didn't bother to remove the internal battery, I just exposed the connections and wired a lithium cell in parallel. Another one I did (on 31 Dec 1999!) used an external two-cell AA battery holder. -- John Honniball coredump at gifford.co.uk

Ethan, Good idea! I wanted to do something like that, but I was thinking of a small plug. I didn't see any small plugs at Radio Shack, though. What I did do was use some of the wires that I taken from PC's.... wire that may have an LED at the end, or a reset switch. I cut it long enough so I could run the wire under the nvram and still have a length of wire left over. I soldered the battery to the wire, put a dab of dielectric grease on the battery and covered it with heat shrink tubing. The exposed wire was also covered in heat shrink tubing. The battery and wire is laid between the case and a plug on the motherboard. It looks pretty good, won't short anything, and since the wire runs under the nvram the wires shouldn't break off the the chip. I think I super glued the wires to the bottom of the nvram, too. I was going to anchor the battery to the side of the case, but found it wasn't necessary on the IPX. Chad Fernandez Michigan, USA Ethan Dicks wrote:

On Fri, 2005-04-08 at 18:00 -0500, Scott Stevens wrote: <snip> If there's FlexLM (Elan?) licensed software on the machine, (and you can get it booted) you can usually look at the appropriate license.dat file, note the HostID in the file, and then use that to generate the ethernet address, as (IIRC) on older Sun's the ethernet address is: 8:0:20:aa:bb:cc where '80aabbcc' is the hostid. (YMMV, as my memory has faded somewhat, but it does pan out on the few SS-5/Ultra5 class machines I just verified it on) David

At 7:53 PM -0500 4/7/05, Scott Stevens wrote: Shoot, systems a lot better than those are free or almost free. I got my Sun Ultra 60/2300 basically for free from a friend. Take a look on eBay and see what low-end Sun Ultra systems, or a SGI system goes for these days! A sizable portion of these systems price is the shipping. Either a Sun or SGI dual CPU system with a decent amount of RAM and a good framebuffer makes a *very* nice system (though I only have a single CPU SGI O2). Even a bottom-end SGI O2 180Mhz R5000 (the model with no CPU cache to speak of) is amazingly responsive under a *heavy* load. While I *really* like SGI systems, I'd have to recommend a similarly configured Sun system. I'm guessing older IBM RS/6000's and HP PA-RISC systems are available dirt cheap as well, I've not looked into either, as I'm not interested in collecting Unix systems. Where you might end up paying some serious money is on specific options (especially SCSI adapters faster than UW-SCSI, or Gigabit Ethernet). Also in the case of SGI systems, OS Kit's cost a serious amount (I tend to suspect the same is true for IBM and HP systems). 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/ |