Sun SparcStation 4 - Need Help to Hook up cables, & Docs

[Mouse]

> I obtained a Sun SparcStation 4 at the CoCoFEST for which I need some
> information on the proper hook up of the cables.  The SCSI cables I
> can guess, but the PS/2 cables I'm not so sure of.

I'm fairly sure the SS4 doesn't use PS/2 connectors for anything.
(Well, unless you have an unusual card in the machine.)  My SS4s are
not very accessible at the moment, or I'd check, but I'm pretty sure
none of the pre-SPARC64 machines used PS/2 connectors for anything.

I would guess you are mistaking the miniDIN-8 connector, used for
keyboard and mouse, for a PS/2 connector; the shell is the same size,
but the pin layout is all different.

> There is one PS/2 connector on the back of the Monitor labeled A/B
> and on the SparcStstion itself is a DB25 pin connector labeled Serial
> A/B.  Do these connect together?

I don't know.  The DB25 is the serial ports.  I don't know why you'd
connect those to a monitor, but maybe.

> One PS/2 connector exists on the Sparcstation so how does both the
> PS/2 connector on the Keyboard and the mouse connect to the
> SparcStation?

Normally, the minDIN-8 on the machine connects to a miniDIN-8 on the
keyboard; the mouse plugs into another miniDIN-8 on the keyboard.

> Also I understand that it is password protected so I need the
> "Super-secret" procedure to remove the password.  I was told this is
> possible.

It is, at least if this is just talking about the ROM password.  There
are at least two ways to deal with it: (1) boot the machine from
whatever it's configured to boot from, but provide it a boot device that
boots to an OS you control, which you then use to clear the PROM
security settings; and (2) swap the NVRAM chip into a machine of a
different kind (but using compatible NVRAMs), which you then use to
re-init the settings.

> Documentation in any form is quite necessary as well.

Documentation on what?  Do you want to know what the back-panel
connectors are for, what's necessary to make your own SBus cards, how
to talk to add-on hardware that's in the machine, how to use software
that came with it, what?

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