RS2030 MIPS workstation

[Dennis Grevenstein]

Hi,

On 5/3/19 3:22 PM, Pete Turnbull via cctalk wrote:
> Anyone know much about early MIPS workstations?  I'm trying to get a
> MIPS RS2030 to boot, without much luck so far.  It  goes through the
> selftest but stops with the internal LED display at "5" accompanied by
> a continuous beep. 
> 
> Known problems: 
> 
> - The Dallas DS1287 battery is flat; I can hack a 3V lithium onto that.
> I assume it should still work to some extent 
> even if the contents are lost? 

I have the same problem with a cloned MIPS machine, a Sumitomo
Sumistation SP300. The biggest problem with my machine is that the
NVRAM holds the ethernet address. If it goes flat, there seems to be
no way to reprogram the NVRAM. If you find any solution for this,
please tell me.
Aside from the now broken ethernet, the machine works fine. It’s a
25MHz R3000 with 32MB RAM. The box runs SEIUX, something like
Risc/os 4 in SVR3 mode with extra japanese localization, but adapted
to the hardware.

Some people said that some of the old MIPS machines used a M48T02
NVRAM and that you could plug the NVRAM in a SPARCstation to restore
the ethernet address. So far, I have found no mentioning of the DS1287.
A special problem with my machine is that most parts are soldered,
including the NVRAM.

Dennis