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v2.9 PROM for SPARCstation IPC & IPX

xelalex

xelalex

New Member
Joined
Jan 24, 2022
Messages
7
Location
Munich, Germany
Hi,

I've recently restored two SPARCstations, an IPC and an IPX. Major problem with both were faulty power supplies. That's all fixed now and I have them running Solaris 2.3 (via RaSCSI, works pretty well). Now I'd also like to upgrade the PROMs in these machines. In particular the IPC has a fairly old 1.x release (can't check exact number right now). I've searched quite a bit, but it seems to be pretty hard to get hold of the PROM images. From what I've found out, v2.9 should be the latest version that's supported in IPC & IPX. Any hints?

Regards,
Alex
 
Excellent! I've already burnt the IPX ROM and installed it, works great. I'll probably do the IPC ROM tomorrow, need to find a UV light first... :p

Thanks a lot!
 
I got lucky and found my UV light, that I hadn't used in years. But I'm wondering if some of the EPROMs in our vintage Suns might have modern pin-compatible EEPROM replacements we could use instead? Not that we'll really be rewriting them over and over, but still a lot easier to erase (or if certain ROM revisions have strange quirks).
 
If the devices use JEDEC pinouts the EPROMs are probably pretty close to, but not exactly, the EEPROM pinouts. From 256 kbit (32 KB) upwards the two are incompatible on just a few pins, starting with A14 being in different places. You can see some pinout comparisons for sizes up to 512 kbit (64 KB) here, along with various references to further information.

It's not too hard to build a little adapter, or even just bend and bodge-wire a couple of pins, to get an EEPROM working in an EPROM socket.
 
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