Looking for something else in the workshop I came across a SBC6120. Well, well, forgotten all about it. I bought the bits soon after it was announced so I suppose around 2002-3 or so, built it, fiddled with it then put it away.
So, hooked it up, prepared an OS on CF and tried it. Not so good, the status lights flicked back and forth continuously between (supposedly) a RAM failure and running. Left it running like that while I browsed the manual for a bit and when I next looked it had settled down and identified the CF card. Tried to boot it, got the ‘.’ and OS/8 came up. Well well.
But it does this every time so something’s amiss. When switched on it errors for several minutes then settles down presumably after something’s warmed up, not that anything much gets very warm of course but maybe a single junction somewhere - who knows. Doesn’t seem to help it varying the supply voltage a little either. Once running it does seem OK except for a single oddity - Adventure seems to hang for some reason-???
Fished around the www for a bit and downloaded some more recent ROM images and burned some EPROMS to try. More bad news - with these there’s a hard error on boot which diagnoses a failed 6120. Odd - I don’t think the newer ROMs do a more extensive processor test, just add a few extra commands to the ‘bios’....
So I think I’m a bit stuck for the moment. So near and yet ... Don’t have any spare chips to try swapping for the processor or RAM so looks like a short pause while I consider what to do next.
So, hooked it up, prepared an OS on CF and tried it. Not so good, the status lights flicked back and forth continuously between (supposedly) a RAM failure and running. Left it running like that while I browsed the manual for a bit and when I next looked it had settled down and identified the CF card. Tried to boot it, got the ‘.’ and OS/8 came up. Well well.
But it does this every time so something’s amiss. When switched on it errors for several minutes then settles down presumably after something’s warmed up, not that anything much gets very warm of course but maybe a single junction somewhere - who knows. Doesn’t seem to help it varying the supply voltage a little either. Once running it does seem OK except for a single oddity - Adventure seems to hang for some reason-???
Fished around the www for a bit and downloaded some more recent ROM images and burned some EPROMS to try. More bad news - with these there’s a hard error on boot which diagnoses a failed 6120. Odd - I don’t think the newer ROMs do a more extensive processor test, just add a few extra commands to the ‘bios’....
So I think I’m a bit stuck for the moment. So near and yet ... Don’t have any spare chips to try swapping for the processor or RAM so looks like a short pause while I consider what to do next.