6 Mar
2005
6 Mar
'05
9 a.m.
Unearthed a Sun 2/120 yesterday (CPU cabinet plus disk cabinet plus mono
screen) but unfortunately no sign of a keyboard or mouse.
Anyone know if a later Sun keyboard and mouse can be wired via an
adapter to work? We've got a couple of Sun 3 keyboards & mice kicking
around which would be enough to test the machine out at least.
Both the keyboard and mouse connectors on the Sun 2 are 6-pin RJ45-style
connectors (they're probably not called RJ45 in this case as they're
smaller, but you get the idea).
Actually, I have a feeling that the mouse on our Sun 3/50 uses the same
connector (where it plus into the back of the keyboard) so that might be
the exact right part. The keyboard on the 3/50's a DB15 though...
cheers
Jules
6 Mar
6 Mar
1:35 p.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
Anyone know if a later Sun keyboard and mouse can be
wired via an
adapter to work? We've got a couple of Sun 3 keyboards & mice kicking
around which would be enough to test the machine out at least.
Electrically, yes. Sun made adapters for the Sun 3 DA15
keyboard/mouse connector, one that let you plug in a Type 2 keyboard
and mouse, and another for a Type 4 keyboard and mouse. Both passive.
I used to use a Type 2 keyboard on a 3/60 through one of these
adapters. A co-worker had a 3/60 which had been fitted with a Type 4
keyboard using one of the other adapters.
Sun did ship some Type 3 mice with RJ11-like plugs that had little
golden studs out the sides so they wouldn't fit the RJ11-like jack
on the back of the Sun 2s. I'm not sure what this intended to do,
keep you from plugging the mouse into a telephone jack perhaps.
-Frank McConnell
6:31 p.m.
On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 14:00:40 +0000
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Unearthed a Sun 2/120 yesterday (CPU cabinet plus disk cabinet plus
mono screen) but unfortunately no sign of a keyboard or mouse.
Anyone know if a later Sun keyboard and mouse can be wired via an
adapter to work? We've got a couple of Sun 3 keyboards & mice kicking
around which would be enough to test the machine out at least.
Both the keyboard and mouse connectors on the Sun 2 are 6-pin
RJ45-style connectors (they're probably not called RJ45 in this case
as they're smaller, but you get the idea).
Actually, I have a feeling that the mouse on our Sun 3/50 uses the
same connector (where it plus into the back of the keyboard) so that
might be the exact right part. The keyboard on the 3/50's a DB15
though...
cheers
Jules
I would suggest bringing it up with a serial console, to check things
out. I am assuming that a Sun 2 follows the convention of later Sun
hardware and supports a serial console if it finds no keyboard. Is this
the case?
I have a lot of Sun hardware here that has never had a keyboard or
monitor attached. Just a serial console to get it running and an OS
installed, then ethernet (and power) becomes it's sole connection to the
outside world.
18 Mar
18 Mar
9:08 a.m.
I have a running 2/120 and 2/50 client. Let me know if you need some help
with yours.
http://users.ids.net/%7ethompson/Sun/vcf-east-2.0.html
At 02:00 PM 3/6/2005 +0000, you wrote:
Unearthed a Sun 2/120 yesterday (CPU cabinet plus disk cabinet plus mono
screen) but unfortunately no sign of a keyboard or mouse.
Anyone know if a later Sun keyboard and mouse can be wired via an
adapter to work? We've got a couple of Sun 3 keyboards & mice kicking
around which would be enough to test the machine out at least.
Both the keyboard and mouse connectors on the Sun 2 are 6-pin RJ45-style
connectors (they're probably not called RJ45 in this case as they're
smaller, but you get the idea).
Actually, I have a feeling that the mouse on our Sun 3/50 uses the same
connector (where it plus into the back of the keyboard) so that might be
the exact right part. The keyboard on the 3/50's a DB15 though...
cheers
Jules
Michael Thompson
E-Mail: M_Thompson at IDS.net
19 Mar
19 Mar
4:32 p.m.
On Fri, 2005-03-18 at 09:08 -0500, Michael Thompson wrote:
I have a running 2/120 and 2/50 client. Let me know if
you need some help
with yours.
Well, it turned out to be a rather successful day with the machine. All
of the boards proved to be OK despite the power supply explosion the
other day. The replacement caps in the PSU seem to be holding and doing
their job.
When it got to be time to check out the disk cabinet, the PSU in that
checked out OK (apart from one noise supression cap letting go). So,
hooked it up to the disk and powered it up without the CPU. No horrible
noises (except for the case fans - bearings are shot), and the drive
ready LED came on. So far so good.
Hadn't found any external SMD cables at that point, so took the case
sides off and ran ribbon cables directly from the CPU cardcage to the
SMD drive.
Hooked up a vt420 terminal on the first serial board, and fired it all
up - success! It's running SunOS 4.03 - after an initial fsck it booted
to multi-user mode.
The Ethernet card may be a source of trouble. It seems to want something
that provides an external heartbeat - we hooked up a DEC hub to get
around that problem, which stopped the "no carrier" messages on the
console. However, it's still throwing up "Ethernet jammed" messages -
and ideas what that's about?
Also, the disk isn't perfect. It's thrown up a couple of unrecoverable
ECC errors during the time we've had it running, so there are definitely
one or two bad blocks on the drive. We've got spare SMD drives if needs
be. Maybe SunOS has a bad block scanning / remapping command that can be
used post-install? (Probably not though - it usually seems to be an
install-time thing)
Still, it seems happy enough. No sign of the proper console keyboard,
but then using the 19" mono screen and a terminal console just for input
seems to be working just fine, so that's no big deal...
cheers
Jules
20 Mar
20 Mar
5:01 p.m.
Also, the disk isn't perfect. It's thrown up a
couple of unrecoverable
ECC errors during the time we've had it running, so there are definitely
one or two bad blocks on the drive. We've got spare SMD drives if needs
be. Maybe SunOS has a bad block scanning / remapping command that can be
used post-install? (Probably not though - it usually seems to be an
install-time thing)
The disk program that you are looking for is "format". If you plug on a
second SMD drive, and it is one of the models used by Sun, then you can
select the appropriate model, select the partition table to use, and
format/verify the drive. A 124MB drive takes hours to format and verify.
There are two SMD controller boards that will work in your system. The 450
is limited to less than 1024 cylinders, the 451 will work with larger drives.
Michael Thompson
E-Mail: M_Thompson at IDS.net
7059
days inactive
7073
days old
5 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
chenmel＠earthlink.net -
fmc＠reanimators.org -
julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk -
m_thompson＠ids.net