Picked up stuff from Pete's

[Alan Perry]

For those follow the rescue of equipment from Pete Lancashire's place 
outside of Portland ...

I went out there last Friday. Pete was unavailable, so a friend of his 
let me and showed me where to avoid stepping.

The amount of stuff there was impressive/amazing/overwhelming. Aside 
from the test equipment and old telecom equipment that was pointed out 
when I was shown around, it was hard to focus on one thing because I 
would immediately see something else interesting that grabbed my attention.

I picked up seven Sun SPARC systems and three Compaq-branded Alpha systems.

The Alpha systems all went to a local (Seattle) person who is talking to 
Bill Gunshannon about possibly getting one out to him. One of the Alphas 
was a DS20 deskside and I never figured out what the other two were. 
They were narrower and longer than the DS20. There were also some loose 
72G Ultra3 SCSI HDDs.

The Suns were a SS1, SS2, two SS5s (one with a Netra top cover), two 
SS20s (one with its cover removed and MBus card and memory lying near 
it) and a SS1+ "prototype". I am keeping the SS1+ and a SS5. I have 
found a home for a couple more of them and will be looking for a home 
for the rest.

The SS20s are the most problematic. As you would expect from a system 
with its top cover missing, one of the SS20s does not display any 
diagnostic output or get to the OBP prompt after being powered on. The 
"good" one displays a "replace motherboard" message while going through 
its diagnostics.

Also, as you might expect, the one called a prototype was the most 
interesting to me. I am a long-time Sun employee and, while I wasn't 
around when the SS1+ was developed, I know people who were. It isn't 
like any prototype that they knew of. Still trying to figure out exactly 
what it is. The top cover is metal and slides over the chassis (not 
plastic and pivots into place like a SS1+. There are no external 
markings on it. It has a Sun SS1+ motherboard, Sun0424 HDDs, and uses 
SS1/SS1+/SS2 HDD carriers, but has a Sony (not Sun) labeled power supply.

As far as the 029 keypunch, it is still there. There was some confusion 
and the people who were supposed to come get it didn't. I have described 
to them where it is and how I would go about removing it.

alan