25 May
2005
25 May
'05
9:49 a.m.
Just picked one of these up, lurking in a SPARCStation 1 case. I gether
it's a SPARC 5 clone board.
It seems to have 30 pin SIMM memory, but also a couple of 72 pin sockets
(both of these and all 16 30 pin sockets are filled).
Anyone able to tell me if there's anything special about the 72 pin
sockets? I'm assuming both types of socket are used as main memory and
this was just done for flexibility, but it'd be nice to know (just in
case the 72 pin ones are for disk cache or something equally strange)
It seems Tadpole bought Cycle a number of years back, so I'll give them
a poke just on the offchance they have a manual kicking around (their
European base is only just down the road from me)
cheers
Jules
25 May
25 May
10:17 a.m.
On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 01:49:12PM +0000, Jules Richardson wrote:
Just picked one of these up, lurking in a SPARCStation 1 case. I gether
it's a SPARC 5 clone board.
It seems to have 30 pin SIMM memory, but also a couple of 72 pin sockets
(both of these and all 16 30 pin sockets are filled).
Anyone able to tell me if there's anything special about the 72 pin
sockets? I'm assuming both types of socket are used as main memory and
this was just done for flexibility, but it'd be nice to know (just in
case the 72 pin ones are for disk cache or something equally strange)
I have one of these boards in the same case, they must have been a popular
upgrade. It's my understanding that you have to install a matched pair of
72 pin parity simms. According the web site (which is now gone), the max RAM
was 128MB (16 x 4MB 30 pin simms, 2 x 32MB 72 pin simms). This is how mine
is configured. They also use the Sun Y serial cable that splits one DB-25 into
A/B serial ports, as well as an external dongle for audio. The other DB-25 is
a parallel port.
It's actually quite a nice board.
-Andrew
10:59 a.m.
On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 11:17 -0300, Andrew Reynolds wrote:
On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 01:49:12PM +0000, Jules
Richardson wrote:
They also use the Sun Y serial cable that splits one DB-25 into
A/B serial ports, as well as an external dongle for audio. The other DB-25 is
a parallel port.
Heh, so I just discovered. The parallel port lines up with what's
labelled as Serial port A on the back of the case :-(
Luckily I don't think I've destroyed any serial hardware on the PC I was
using as a terminal! I think it's stuck trying to do a network boot at
present according to the messages I'm getting out of it now I've swapped
the serial cable over to the other DB25.
Can't remember how to simulate a stop-A from a terminal now, as this
would likely drop me into the monitor...
cheers!
Jules
2:22 p.m.
Heh, so I just discovered. The parallel port lines up
with what's
labelled as Serial port A on the back of the case :-(
Luckily I don't think I've destroyed any
serial hardware on the PC I
was using as a terminal!
That is not entirely coincidence. Serial ports are supposed to have
enough impedence that you can apply any voltage in some wide range like
?25V (relative to ground) to any pin or combination of pins without
damage. Certainly well beyond anything a parallel port is going to
produce.
Of course, lots of peecee makers ignore the spec in other ways, so they
might ignore it in this repsect too...but at least it's _supposed_ to
be able to survive such treatment.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
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X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
7:13 p.m.
On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 11:17 -0300, Andrew Reynolds wrote:
I would be suprised if you had. Serial ports don't normally mind TTL
levels applied to them. But the TTL parallel port on the Sparc board
probablyt didn't like RS232 levels. How much damage has been done remains
to be seen I gures.
-tony
On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 01:49:12PM +0000, Jules
Richardson wrote:
They also use the Sun Y serial cable that splits one DB-25 into
A/B serial ports, as well as an external dongle for audio. The other DB-25 is
a parallel port.
Heh, so I just discovered. The parallel port lines up with what's
labelled as Serial port A on the back of the case :-(
Luckily I don't think I've destroyed any serial hardware on the PC I was
using as a terminal! I think it's stuck trying to do a network boot at
26 May
26 May
7:10 a.m.
On Thu, 2005-05-26 at 00:13 +0100, Tony Duell wrote:
Well it certainly all seems happy enough; plus what the chap thought was
the sound of a very ill hard disk has turned out to be a minature fan
over one of the ICs, so there's a chance data might still be intact on
the drive (fingers crossed he'd turned the thing on, heard the noise,
and diagnosed it as a dead disk and turned it off again without waiting
for it to try and boot :)
On the parallel port side of things, I suppose it might have toasted
something. No great loss there though. Grr to Cycle for not providing
labels to stick over the back of the case to warn that what's labelled
as a serial port actually isn't on their boards! (I suppose this is one
time where the PC standard of using male sockets for serial ports would
have made things obvious too)
cheers
Jules
On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 11:17 -0300, Andrew Reynolds wrote:
I would be suprised if you had. Serial ports don't normally mind TTL
levels applied to them. But the TTL parallel port on the Sparc board
probablyt didn't like RS232 levels. How much damage has been done remains
to be seen I gures. On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 01:49:12PM +0000, Jules
Richardson wrote:
They also use the Sun Y serial cable that splits one DB-25 into
A/B serial ports, as well as an external dongle for audio. The other DB-25 is
a parallel port.
Heh, so I just discovered. The parallel port lines up with what's
labelled as Serial port A on the back of the case :-(
Luckily I don't think I've destroyed any serial hardware on the PC I was
using as a terminal! I think it's stuck trying to do a network boot at
8:52 p.m.
On the parallel port side of things, I suppose it
might have toasted
something. No great loss there though. Grr to Cycle for not providing
labels to stick over the back of the case to warn that what's labelled
as a serial port actually isn't on their boards! (I suppose this is one
time where the PC standard of using male sockets for serial ports would
have made things obvious too)
The _correct_ standard is to use a male DB25 for a DTE (terminal) and a
female one for a DCE (modem). The old way to rememebr that (and I am
showing my age now) is that Ma Bell is female, and that's where you
rented the modem from. The practical reason was you bought the terminal
but rented the modem, so any bent pins were on the bit you owned and were
thus not free repairs :-)
You can moan at IBM for using a DB25 for the parallel port rather than a
36 pin Blue Ribbon connector....
-tony
27 May
27 May
3:11 a.m.
On 27 May, 2005, at 02:52, Tony Duell wrote:
The _correct_ standard is to use a male DB25 for a DTE (terminal) and a
female one for a DCE (modem). The old way to rememebr that (and I am
showing my age now) is that Ma Bell is female, and that's where you
rented the modem from.
My mnemonic was that pins always point towards the network.
Wonder if I still have an old CCITT Yellow Book stashed away
somewhere...
--
-bv
10:05 p.m.
On Fri, 27 May 2005 01:52:54 +0100 (BST)
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:
Yes, but a 36 pin connector never would have fit on the 'olde standard'
for the IBM-PC, which was an MDA card with a 9 pin connector for video,
and a 25 pin connector for the printer. Many, many first-generation PCs
never had any 'I/O' beyond this (except the 37 pin connector on back of
the floppy controller for the external third and fourth floppy drives,
of course, which nobody ever used). Moving data around was a sneakernet
thing. Or you printed it on paper.
On the
parallel port side of things, I suppose it might have toasted
something. No great loss there though. Grr to Cycle for not
providing labels to stick over the back of the case to warn that
what's labelled as a serial port actually isn't on their boards! (I
suppose this is one time where the PC standard of using male sockets
for serial ports would have made things obvious too)
The _correct_ standard is to use a male DB25 for a DTE (terminal) and
a female one for a DCE (modem). The old way to rememebr that (and I am
showing my age now) is that Ma Bell is female, and that's where you
rented the modem from. The practical reason was you bought the
terminal but rented the modem, so any bent pins were on the bit you
owned and were thus not free repairs :-)
You can moan at IBM for using a DB25 for the parallel port rather than
a 36 pin Blue Ribbon connector....
-tony
28 May
28 May
7:23 p.m.
Yes, but a 36 pin connector never would have fit on
the 'olde standard'
for the IBM-PC, which was an MDA card with a 9 pin connector for video,
It's not my fault that IBM made the bracket too small, and actually, the
slot in the back panel is just too narrow to take a standard Blue Ribbon
connector, which makes GPIB cards a little difficult to do right (the
normal thing is to use the IEC625 (IIRC) wiring on a DB25 connector again).
and a 25 pin connector for the printer. Many, many
first-generation PCs
never had any 'I/O' beyond this (except the 37 pin connector on back of
the floppy controller for the external third and fourth floppy drives,
of course, which nobody ever used). Moving data around was a sneakernet
False!. I used it (and still use it). My XT (on my desk in front of me)
has 2 internal 5.25" 360K drives, 2 external 3.5" 720K drives all on the
standard controller). Oh, and a second controller with 2 8" drives.
thing. Or you printed it on paper.
I would have thought RS232 ports wrre not that uncommon. Most multi-I/O
cards included one.
-tony
29 May
29 May
1:02 a.m.
On Sun, 29 May 2005, Tony Duell wrote:
It's not my fault that IBM made the bracket too
small, and actually, the
slot in the back panel is just too narrow to take a standard Blue Ribbon
connector, which makes GPIB cards a little difficult to do right (the
normal thing is to use the IEC625 (IIRC) wiring on a DB25 connector again).
The slots on the PC (5 slot motherboard) are wider than the slots on the
XT (8 slot motherboard) I have an old SCSI card or two that DO use a Blue
Ribbon connector!
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
7030
days inactive
7032
days old
11 comments
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participants (7)
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ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
bv＠norbionics.com -
chenmel＠earthlink.net -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk -
mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA -
randrewreynolds＠yahoo.ca