The collected works of cb88 - Page 1

cb88
Stranger
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
and authored 2 notes
Wrote on the subject of SS10 power supply concerns at June 25, 2010, 8:17 a.m...
So I have two SS10s one of which I would like to upgrade to a quad ROSS hyperSPARC system. What concerns me is that the PSU is rated 140 watts I believe and the ross datasheets indicate that the 142Mhz dual wide ross parts I am considering may use as much as 69watts each (single width model uses 74 watts)!

I have read in mailing lists of people running quad hypersparcs in SS10/SS20 but I have no idea what sort of configuration they are using or if they possible upgraded the PSU somehow. The MBUS guide does not seem accurate as the single width card which has a higher power rating has no heat warning whereas the double width HM142W-1024 is only indicated to be fairly hot.

So does anyone have any experience with quad ROSS systems here I understand that the SS20 also only has a 150watt PSU so wouldn't make much difference since just CG6 and a newer and thus more efficent SCSI drive would probably even the SS20 at its limit?

I'm also hunting an AG-10E for the other SS10.

ROSS datasheets .... I'm looking at rt226c.pdf
http://www.cilinder.be/docs/ross/

http://mbus.sunhelp.org/systems/sun/ss10.htm#9
cb88
Stranger
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
and authored 2 notes
Wrote on the subject of SS10 power supply concerns at June 25, 2010, 1:53 p.m...
You're probably right... even thought the PSU is only 10watts more I have heard the cooling is much better. I have an Ultra1 (167Mhz 128Mb and TGX graphics ) and 2 SS2s (on with original CPU the other is a weitek) that I could sell / trade for an SS20

That said I'll probably jump on the ross mbus modules first .... unless I magically come into a load of cash :-) my last purchase an hp 50g sucked me dry
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of What SUN hardware do we have? at Nov. 19, 2010, 8:46 p.m...
Just added a bit to my collection. Currently I have SS2 80Mhz,SS2 40Mhz, SS5 70Mhz, U1 167Mhz ... I bought a ZX framebuffer to fiddle around with it works well with my 19in monitor but my 21in seem to be failing (I get an image skewed right and down and when X starts it dies). Sadly the HyperSparcs on ebay jumped up in price recently so I probably won't get one of those. I might be getting an rdi powerlite 50 if I can muster about $35 for the shipping.

Hardware I hope to have at some point: AG-10E framebuffer, sparcbook 3GX (so I can fiddle on the go ^.^ )

I hope the ZX/Leo documentation gets out of the legal review if it hasn't been forgotten in the oracle takeover... supposedly its been in the queue since 2008.

I guess some people collect this old sparc hardware because it is nostalgic for them.... I like them purely for the architecture though as I found out about sparc after it was almost dead (yeah theres a few LEONs floating around out there and Fujitsu is faithful to the architecture).
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of What SUN hardware do we have? at Nov. 23, 2010, 11:35 a.m...
Heh... true. But apparently the do have the document and are just sitting on it for no real reason as the hardware is soo old.

Does anyone have any idea of where to find the openGL drivers for the ZX? I have solaris 2.6 installed but it only has XGL and I don't think its acellerated other than supporting DGA. TGS apparently had a "normal" opengl driver for the ZX but I can't find it anywhere.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of What SUN hardware do we have? at Nov. 26, 2010, 7:38 p.m...
While I'm no expert on the ZX I have read quite a bit of the documentation that is available on it and Solaris 2.6 does not ship accelerated OpenGL drivers for it both the OpenGL 1.1 and 1.2 implementations by sun are software rendered with direct memory mapped access to the card that is the only acceleration implemented.

I may have mentioned it before but TGS had an acellerated implementation of OpenGL for use with OpenInventor I guess. I haven't found any binaries though. The SUNWvts package (run /opt/SUNWvts/bin/vtsui or leotest manually if you know the options ha) on the sol2.6 supplimental software cd provides a rendering test suite for the ZX which I was able to run none of which was impressive really considering there are 5 25Mhz DSPs on the board it certainly should be able to do realtime rendering of some sort.

I'm pretty sure XGL (precursor to GLX I guess ) isn't even accelerated though I wouldn't mind someone telling me I'm wrong.

You could be right about the NDAs... but in that case what would stop someone from getting an NDA simlar to the developers that worked on the radeon drivers early on. I find it really odd that Sun wasn't shipping drivers that took advandage of this hardware as expensive as it was and relying on 3rd party.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of What SUN hardware do we have? at Nov. 28, 2010, 11:37 a.m...
You wouldn't happen to have any *extra* optical mouse mats would you? I have 2-3 optical mice but no pads which leaves me stuck with ball mice X.x.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of What SUN hardware do we have? at Nov. 30, 2010, 5:06 p.m...
Yeah I knew there were 2 differnet types of pads already ... I found a .ps file at one time but I think it was for only one model ? So sure an upload would be appreciated.

@Tabalabs Cool no rush :--) dude sounds like a useful project at least considering the lack of keyboards and mice for suns.

Legal nao tenha pressa cara, parece um projeto muito util :-) vendo a faulta de teclado e mouse compativel com sun hardware.

Morei no Brazil quase 5 anos em MG ;-)
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 36 notes
Wrote on the subject of A call for Brazilian users - Brazilian area on the forum at Dec. 22, 2010, 1:59 p.m...
Cool idea... dunno how practical.. as workstations are heavy to ship making them pretty impractical unless you can pick them up locally smaller stuff like might take off though. For instance a SATA-> SCSI-2 adapter would be amazing especially if it cost about $20-30 or 50 Reais and would fit inside a 2.5in drive caddy with a drive.

These days I only visit Minas Gerais every other year or so...to make sure my permanent residence doesn't expire :C
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of You graphics geeks might get a kick out of this: Sun GT at Oct. 3, 2011, 10:50 p.m...
I've actually emailed Mr Deering before about the Leo/ZX framebuffer he didn't have much info on it though. no manuals or anything quite disappointing. he seemed like a nice enough fellow though.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 36 notes
Wrote on the subject of Looking for the list of Solaris proprietary software at Nov. 28, 2011, 10:26 p.m...
It would be nice to categorize them by what hardware they ran on as well. I know there was some TGS software (OpenInventor) than ran os 32bit SPARCstations and later 64bit they even provided their own direct opengl implementation for ZX TGX SX etc.... I think the ZX was actually accelerated.

Also the graphics tower not long ago was most likely used for early 3D cad/cam which then moved striaght to the ZX as it worked better... going from some of the developers remarks the GT wasn't very good.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of Solaris 2.6 TGS Opengl at Dec. 19, 2011, 7:40 p.m...
Does anyone know anything about TGS OpenGL for Solaris?

From what I understand it could be downloaded from Template graphics ftp site in the 90's though I am not sure if it required a license.

And it supplied accelerated Opengl for ZX which sun doesn't seem to do.. they just use the ZX as an overgrown framebuffer according to the documentation. If someone has a copy and they don't think it would be violating any copyright laws I would like to get a copy of it.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of Solaris 2.6 TGS Opengl at Dec. 22, 2011, 11:32 p.m...
I've got a copy of the drivers now.. Opengl 1.0 and 1.1... as well as LeoTool 2.0 which was used to demonstrate what sun hardware could do.

I'm afraid they aren't trial versions though so I can't really post a link to them on the forum or anything its a pity sotware copyrights don't run out faster. I will try and get them working though and post again about how that goes.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of Questions About My New Kit: Sun Fire T2000 at Nov. 16, 2012, 10:22 p.m...
Just curious but on a T1000 or T2000 are the PCI-E slots good for anything generic on Linux? I know GPU support is pretty limited on Solaris Sparc... I wonder if it fairs better with Linux/Mesa being able to do CUDA/OpenCL might be interesting since there is some work being done to accelerate some kenrel functionality with it so crypto could be reasonable on linux if that were workable.

I am fairly certain VGA during early boot at least wouldn't work however I think it would be pretty interesting to get a newish GPU in there... I would imagine linux would be able to initialize it even if it couldn't be used as a console pre boot.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of A little SparcBook conquest at Dec. 22, 2012, 7:30 p.m...
Well if you get tired of it send me a pm... I've seen 3 of these online in the past year and have missed each one well still waiting on the one richtom had but he is MIA it seems... I mean what better thing could there be to set on the dinette of a 1974 winnabago :P (SS20 sure wont fit not with even my sony monitor lol)
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of A little SparcBook conquest at Jan. 7, 2013, 4:15 a.m...
Not sure... but even so I wouldn't mind having a GX but he hasn't been on in quite awhile.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of Sparc emulator at March 18, 2013, 8:44 p.m...
http://people.csail.mit.edu/fredette/tme/

I also have some patched code here.. which since the original author isn't developing much on it could probably use some improvements as I have suggested if anyone were interested.

https://github.com/cb88/tme
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of Sparc emulator at March 23, 2013, 9:19 p.m...
For what it is worth tme also emulates the ultra 1 I believe it is... won't get you solaris 10 but then why in the world would you run that in emulation ;)
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of sun t2000 ram configuration at April 18, 2013, 11:59 p.m...
I'm having a bit of trouble with my t2000 ... I suspect a bad stick of ram or the memory controller. Question is how do I go about determining the problem. I have 16 2Gb sticks installed but it doesn't show all of that physically connected... so any ideas?


I was able to boot up MartUX into a console... so I can run some diagnostics from solaris if that would help.

My ALOM battery is bad... so I'll probably replace that tomorrow so the system date will stay correct I don't know if that would affect anything else.

Code:
Current mode: NORMAL
Attaching network interface lo0... done.
Attaching network interface motfec0.... done.
Booting from Segment 1


Oracle Advanced Lights Out Manager CMT v1.7.10


SC Alert: SC System booted.


Full VxDiag Tests

BASIC TOD TEST
Read the TOD Clock:
SC Alert: Preceding SC reset due to watchdog
SAT JAN 01 00:01:51 2000
Wait, 1 - 3 seconds
Read the TOD Clock:        SAT JAN 01 00:01:53 2000
BASIC TOD TEST, PASSED

ETHERNET CPU LOOPBACK TEST
50 BYTE PACKET   - a 0 in field of 1's.
50 BYTE PACKET   - a 1 in field of 0's.
900 BYTE PACKET  - pseudo-random data.
ETHERNET CPU LOOPBACK TEST, PASSED

Full VxDiag Tests - PASSED



Status summary  -  Status = 7FFF

VxDiag    -          -  PASSED
POST      -          -  PASSED
LOOPBACK  -          -  PASSED

I2C       -          -  PASSED
EPROM     -          -  PASSED
FRU PROM  -          -  PASSED

ETHERNET  -          -  PASSED
MAIN CRC  -          -  PASSED
BOOT CRC  -          -  PASSED

TTYD      -          -  PASSED
TTYC      -          -  PASSED
MEMORY    -          -  PASSED
MPC885    -          -  PASSED


Please login: JAN 01 00:01:57 ERROR: System memory downgraded to 2-channel mode from 4-channel mode
JAN 01 00:01:57 ERROR: Available system memory is less than physically installed memory
JAN 01 00:01:58 ERROR: Using unsupported memory configuration
JAN 01 00:01:58 ERROR: System DRAM  Available: 016384 MB  Physical: 030720 MB
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of Sparcstation 20 and LCDs at May 19, 2013, 8:49 p.m...
My ZX and CG6 cards are definitly not compatible with the SGI cable I have. Don't have any other 13w3 cards to test.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of You graphics geeks might get a kick out of this: Sun GT at July 13, 2013, 12:03 a.m...
For what it is worth there is a xf86-video-sunleo driver nowadays on linux but I have no idea if it works. I I may get around too in in the next new months since I now have a large disk in my SS5.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of Wanted 32bit sparcbook at Aug. 9, 2013, 9:21 p.m...
For instance a Sparcbook 3GX or TX ... or a 3000ST or XT

I was going to get one of richtom's 3TX's but haven't heard from him ages hopefully he's allright. At the time I was also without a stable job which has been solved for about a year now :P

Cb88
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of Sun Blade ram compatibility at Sept. 2, 2013, 12:41 a.m...
So... An SS20 recently came into my possession :D

2xSM81's
currently 320Mb ram... but I have more.
No VSIMM only a cgsix.
QFE
and a single 143Gb SCA drive.

I am thinking I need extra cooling to be on the safe side here... as the floppy drive is likely to never be used I imagine I can use the power from there to run extra fans. Ideally i can see need for 3 fans... one between the PSU and the MBUS. One by the drives and one to pull air out on the opposite side of the PSU dunno if the floppy wiring can run all that. So maybe I could take it from the CD drive. Which is not likely to see much use either being only a 2x drive.

It looks like I can only fit a 60 or 70mm fan :/ unless I were to mount it horrizontally

Oh.. and 3x pcimcia adapters ;-)
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of Sun Blade ram compatibility at Sept. 2, 2013, 9:15 p.m...
The fan cards used to cool the Turbo ZX are fairly interesting I guess http://www.flickr.com/photos/navarzo4/6539030017/

Ahem... *cough* I do have a ZX/Leo too and drivers somewhere If I ever get around to fooling with them ... not the turbo though.

Maybe I could refrigerate the whole case with peltiers :twisted: something like this http://www.ebay.com/itm/Gigantic-62mm-5 ... 0135040904
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 6:19 p.m.
and authored 44 notes
Wrote on the subject of Sun Blade ram compatibility at Sept. 7, 2013, 9:59 p.m...
Well.. a friend of mine suggested swapping the PSU and HD fans fans something faster... probably Vantech fans with a pot to control them so they aren't obscenely loud.

I installed solaris 8 on it the other day... and solaris 9 yesterday seems to run decently but CDE is definitely more suited to the hardware than Gnome 2.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of 2 SparcCenter at Oct. 23, 2013, 6:57 p.m...
I watch craigslist on occasion and saw this... the are pretty hard to come by these days.

Thought someone more local might be interested since I'm on the other side of the country.

http://fortcollins.craigslist.org/sys/4078879663.html
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of 2 SparcCenter at Oct. 26, 2013, 7:52 p.m...
Indeed... at least it sounds like the 1000E is nearly maxed out.

If you're able to get them and ever want them gone give me a heads up! The SC macines are pretty interesting... in their own right the buss design having originated at PARC I believe.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of 2 SparcCenter at Oct. 28, 2013, 5:24 a.m...
Dunno... but if you are hunting them for sale... you better search for both terms cause people will call any of them either one ;-) .

A friend of mine said he once worked on a CS6400 that was running as a mail server... must have been way overkill cause the admins hadn't touched it in so long it hosed itself up (I don't believe he had to do much to get it running again... its probably still there chugging away serving emails)
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of DIY XVR-100 at July 26, 2014, 1:55 p.m...
This is a very old thread... its unlike anyone will see it perhaps you should PM.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of WHat do we all do (occupation)? at July 26, 2014, 3:15 p.m...
Since college I've worked mostly in MS shops... either C# or VB.net (heh..)

First job was working on this guy http://www.chemringdetectionsystems.com ... ion/JBPDS/

Lots of great people working there... Only real regret is I didn't get to work on any of the other projects they had in the oven while I was there.

I just got another job with a company that makes large scale sorting machines doing a variety of work... I recently visited one of the installations in the field also. I must say very cool and very large machines :) Its predominately database driven software as well as interfacing with industrial controls. I may end up designing controller boards for some of their newer designs at some point as well which all is pretty rewarding IMO.

Oh before I forget.... I'm here for anything Sun Microsystems related :D a friend introdueced me to them in college so I started collecting them and seeing what all I can run on them. Currently I'm having a go at updating Gentoo/Sparc32 to run on my sparcstations http://gh0stwriter.net/getoo/ . If you try it out ... beware the dragons :twisted: notably you have to use ld.gold rather than ld.bfd otherwise gcc compiles crash... and my livecd uses an older kernel so the toolchain I have is gcc 4.5.3 + binutils 2.20 so I'll get around to building with a newer kernel at some point.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of RDI Britelite IPX on ebay at Jan. 12, 2015, 10:01 p.m...
The SCSI2SD is only semi working at the moment in my Sparcbook 3GX... but Micheal McMaster has been extremely responsive in helping getting it working.

Currently it works fine as long as you force the disk you are using to read only (requires a special firmware if your OS tends to force RW mode anyway like OpenBSD). It works RW as well... except it will time out sometimes which prevents booting all the way to login it does get up to syslogd and such so quite far. I should know more in a couple weeks ... after Micheal has had time to implement some more features into the SCSI2SD to alleviate the problems. It may end up being limited to 8Gb or less cards sinec those have smaller block sizes... which leads to lower latency which is what is causing the timeouts (we think).

I thought about making an offer on that RDI.. but after all it is just an IPX in a special case with LCD.... and I already have an LX or SS2 depending on which way I want to go with the itch scratching...

Also... RDI also made the Powerlite which would have been a bit newer than this Brightlite. Tadpole ended up buying RDI..... which then got bought by General Dynamics. Most of Tadpole probably went into the C4 Systems devision... My first job was acutally at a company that used to be part of GD then split off :)
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of SunPC card drivers and software where to get it? at Jan. 25, 2015, 11:55 a.m...
So, ideally I would like to get it from the oracle site somehow I don't have a support contract so they might not let me download it even if I found it there. I was able to get alot of documentation from oracle mostly manuals and things though with the account I do have. Apparently sunsolve used to have it available but it is closed down now.

I believe I would need either SunPC 4.1 or 4.2 there the other patches to both of those are available online still at least.

Is there a ligitimate place I can still find it?
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of SunPC card drivers and software where to get it? at Jan. 25, 2015, 1 p.m...
The one I have is the Sbus version ... it's older and has an 133Mhz AMD 5x86 chip on it iirc.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Photos of Sparcbook 64Mb ram modules at March 22, 2015, 9:29 a.m...
There is a 128Mb sparcbook 3gx on ebay at the moment (appears to be slightly damaged as the screen has veritical lines) BUT... it does have the extrememly rare 128Mb factory upgrade. This ram implements the 2 memory slots on the same simm that normal simms don't allow you to fill (really its a dimm slot comprised of a simm on each side of the board I believe.)

I spoked to the seller and was able to get him to most graciously post a few photos of the ram. that ram would be mind if he had wanted to part out :)

Enjoy!

PS. Its still up on ebay till the 27th. But its in Russia!
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Horsepower required to play H.264 video? at Aug. 1, 2015, 6:41 p.m...
Oracle claims to be making some new lower price Sparc processors (which I bet wil still be in the 4-8+ cores range since thier high end stuff is 32cores now)

So... that would be some new stuff that might be able to handle 4k resolution videos in the not so distant future.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of SunPC card drivers and software where to get it? at Aug. 1, 2015, 6:43 p.m...
@radrob ... I think the latest version I found was 4.1 and some patches to get it to 4.2 which may or may not be complete. I haven't had a chance to fire up and test it yet...
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of MaXX is back! at Aug. 1, 2015, 7:06 p.m...
Though sourceforge is pretty crappy... you might want to point your homepage URL there to the new site so people find it!
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of MobaXterm at Aug. 1, 2015, 7:13 p.m...
Yeah I use MobaXterm on windows pretty often....it works well and has built in sftp which is quite nice to use sometimes.
cb88
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Firefox 38 is out at Dec. 21, 2015, 3:02 p.m...
No Rust toolchain yet... but someone just has to build it ... llvm already supports sparc64 decently enough to self host clang thought that is only for 64 bit. So, any further work to get Rust on Sparc is probably just getting it working rather than writing a lot of missing code.
cb88
From Charlotte, NC USA
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Sparcstation 20, Solaris 9, and Sun Studio 11 at Feb. 2, 2016, 4:16 p.m...
You probably ran out of inodes.
cb88
From Charlotte, NC USA
Who joined June 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Sparcstation 20, Solaris 9, and Sun Studio 11 at Feb. 9, 2016, 10:08 a.m...
Yeah, It happens to EVERYONE... just about everytime I drop by the #gentoo IRC somebody is running out of inodes on a small disk either extracting the stage or portage... heh.

Let me know how it goes I'd like to get that same setup working on my SS20.