ajcc's Computer Adventures

[ajcc]

A small update, somewhat on topic

A small update, somewhat on topic

Haven't spent that much time with the SUNs, I've mostly been going between work and sleep. Today I had some free time and went and got myself a storage shelf. Took it home on the bus (should get a drivers license, this is getting stupid) and moved the computers into it.

Here's the first test fitting as many computers onto the shelf as I could:


Probably will move them around a bit. But hopefully having them always setup and ready will give me time to work on them I have an old Pentium MMX machine stuck full with I/O cards that I'll use as the terminal box for all the machines, once I get that box going again. Have to solder up some more null-modem cables as well, lots of work as usual.

On the top is an old DEC StorageWork SCSI raid, thinking about hooking it to the Indy or Ultra1, haven't decided yet. There's also a stack of SUN SCSI cabinets not in use or in the shelf. Hopefully I have enough disk Most of the machines are running NetBSD, haven't decided if I like the project or OS yet, it was quite the fight getting it all setup. There's no CD-drives for the SUNs or the Indy.

So that's a little update.

 

[ajcc]

Sparky got an update

Sparky got an update

So I updated the OpenBoot in Sparky. Have to say that I was really surprised that it just worked to burn an EEPROM and stick it in, in place of the old one. The new one is a cheapo EEPROM in a plastic DIP, the old one was a EPROM in a beautiful ceramic package with a window on top. It complained about the checksum of the configuration in the NVRAM (under the battery). So my idea of stacking another cheapo EEPROMs on top, and put a switch on the chip enable lines, might now work out as well as I'd hoped.

Anyways, some progress


Old OpenBoot PROM, a ceramic AMD AM27C020.


New One. Cheapo plastic Winbond W27C020 EEPROM.

Another good thing with using cheap EEPROMs is they can be erased without the need of expensive UV-eraser.