The collected works of bhtooefr

I thought I'd write up a more comprehensive writeup.

So, here goes.

You will need:

• x86 PC with an available PCI slot, and some way to boot into DOS - floppy, CD-ROM, whatever.
• Radeon 7000 Mac Edition, 32 MiB VRAM. I personally used a genuine ATI card - exactly the same as an XVR-100.
• Copy of the XVR-100 firmware, version 1.61 strongly recommended. The link earlier in the thread is broken, but here's a web archive link .
• Copy of flashrom. Newer copies don't work, the copy from here (link earlier in the thread ALSO broken) does.

Preparation:

1. On a Solaris machine, navigate to the directory that you downloaded the flash update to, and issue the following command:
   

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   $ ./pfb_prom_update_1_61.sh xvr100/
   This will extract the files.
2. Copy xvr100/flash/xvr100.prom.1.61 to the DOS disk.
3. Extract the Radeon 7000 flashkit, and copy the following files to the DOS disk:
   • DOS4GW.EXE
   • FLASHROM.EXE
   • FLASHROM.ROM

Update:

1. Install the Radeon into an available PCI slot on the PC. This is best if there are no other Radeon 7000s in the system - don't want to flash the wrong one.
2. Boot your DOS disk, and run the following command:

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   flashrom -i
3. Look in the resulting list for an adapter with ID 5159. This is a Radeon 7000 - hopefully, the one you want to flash, if there's more than one. Note the adapter number.
4. Optional: If you wish to save the original firmware, issue the following command. N is a placeholder for the adapter number obtained in the previous step:

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   flashrom -s N atimac.bin
5. Enter the following command, changing N to match the adapter number:

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   flashrom -f -pm N xvr100~1.61
6. Assuming the flash completed successfully, power down, and install your new XVR-100 in your Sun!

True, although the closer you stay to the ATI reference design, the better - clones can have issues with this.

And a PogoPlug would be almost as fast as that Pentium III, would pull 5 watts plus the power consumption of hard drives, and isn't x86 - it's ARM (although Linux, not *BSD.)

Anyway, I was under the impression that Sun's particular flavor of EDO *WAS* proprietary. Not that it's hard to find on eBay cheaply.

It's a single-core 1.2 GHz Marvell Kirkwood chip. I forget the performance numbers, though, but it should be able to do all of that sufficiently. The only problem is I/O, because the standard PogoPlug only has USB for connecting mass storage, but there's a clone that has eSATA.

A 1.2 GHz Marvell Kirkwood is significantly slower than even an Atom. I wouldn't use it as a workstation, unless you wanted to run RISC OS or something, and there's better choices for that. (And, besides, the PogoPlug has no video controller.)

And, consumer routers are usually 200 MHz MIPS CPUs, although there's a migration towards ARM.

kramlq: The 2.5.1 install set comes with a CD with CDE and WABI.

Custom connector for *ETHERNET*? Ouch.

Ah, fair enough. My PowerLite combines AUI and both serial ports on some D-shaped connector that is smaller than D-sub, but it has RJ-45.

To figure out which framebuffer you have, see here: http://www.sunshack.org/data/fbfaq/FrameBuffer.html#3