The collected works of kjaer - Page 2

My guess was correct. The 13W3 is wired with separate sync. Here's the pinout -

2 - V
4 - Gnd
5 - H

This doesn't match any other vendor's pinout I'm aware of. A1, A2, and A3 (R, G, and B) seem to match the Sun layout. I am basing this on the (correct) blue bootloader screen that came up. The X desktop only came up with black, white, and grey, and I didn't do much to explore other than to verify things are more or less in order. I got lucky and the root password was blank. There seems to be some app software installed, so I will want to back that up sooner rather than later, and the software license files (if I can find them).

The power-on process seems to go like this:

1. keyboard beep (immediate)
2. RS232 handshake (DSR, RTS, CTS) lines asserted (you can see this with an LED test block on the serial port, they'll go from red to green)
3. keyboard beep
4. display test pattern (brief)
5. display clear
6. console displays self-test results

The second step should happen within a couple of seconds; the third after maybe 10 or 15 seconds. My system appears to be having a problem where it will only progress past step 1 if it's been sitting powered off for many hours. Now that I've got the display wired correctly it ran fine for ten or fifteen minutes before I shut it down, then failed to come up at all the second time. It was doing this before I had the display wired correctly (made it difficult to troubleshoot!) but I didn't know if something was happening on the display that I just couldn't see, or what. As it turns out it's like the CPU never exits reset; it does the exact same thing if the processor and memory modules are removed. The CPU also gets very, very hot when this happens - much hotter than it does when the system runs normally. I have no idea what the problem might be. If it gets past step three, it seems to run fine, possibly for as long as I like. But if I shut it off, however briefly, it needs to sit for >6 hours before it will self-test again.

Also - the second machine arrived this afternoon. It seems to be an InterPro 2020 (C300), and I will need to find a source for the DB5W5 cable it needs to attach a monitor. Looks like it takes 30 pin SIMMs. Good thing SAQ left me with a pile of them. Possibly I could use some more...

AIX doesn't "probably require" MCA. It's supported ISA machines since version 1.2.1. The support is second class, but it's there. The reasons for it to fail virtualization are totally unrelated to microchannel.

80 MB is enough for a minimal installation. You may find it "charmingly old school" or "uncomfortable" depending on your particular cultural bias and outlook on life.

pan1k wrote: I have an HP 9000 735. I tried to install NeXTSTEP 3.3 on it, got it to install on an external drive. I get the NeXTSTEP boot screen, checking disks, blah blah.. then a kernel problem something about the jupiter audio onboard. then it stops and reboots the machine. I tried reinstalling, same problem. Is my cpu board bad??

Possibly.

How much memory is installed? Which graphics?

pan1k wrote: I have 144MB of RAM, Firmware is 2.6, 99MHZ CPU and CRX24 graphics.

You're good there. Try it with a different I/O board I guess.

You do have the 735 I/O board and not, say, a 720 or 730 I/O board? If the network connector is on a separate slide-in module, you have the 735 I/O board. I have no idea what happens when you put a 735 CPU board with the older I/O, but since from a chassis point of view they're fully interchangeable, I have to ask.

Yes, there is a pressfit nylon pinion on the transport motor that opens and closes the drive tray, and also raises and lowers the optical pickup assembly (moves it closer to the disc after the tray closes, and moves it away from the disk before the tray opens). This pinion splits when it ages, and when this happens the static friction between pinion and spindle is no longer sufficient to hold the torque required to lift the optical pickup. The drive interprets this as a mis-load and ejects the tray.

You could (can still?) order a replacement pinion from Toshiba (all these Toshibas share the same design flaw). Or, you can carefully superglue the pinion onto the spindle. I've done this, it works reasonably well if you can live with the increased tray noise (the pinion teeth will exhibit a greater or lesser degree of index deviation due to both the split itself and the insertion of a glue layer between pinion and spindle, depending on how careful you are with your repair).

oreissig wrote: I didn't run NeXTSTEP on my 712 yet (because I run it headless and NeXTSTEP cannot be installed via serial console), but from what I've heard the 712/100 is one of the fastest non-intel NeXTSTEP machines (after the 715/100XC)

Just for the sake of argument, here are some actual NEXTSTEP 3.3 benchmark results.

'make all' -- ISC BIND 8.2.2
715/80: 21:29
P5/133: 18:35

'make all' (non-fat) -- perl 5.6.0
SS5/70: 26:41
SS5/110: 21:20

NWbench results:
SS5/110 TCX: 157068[dhrystone] 99.725716[MIPS] 0.784[gfx v/v] 6.384[gfx d/v] 24.678793s[webster] 45.900536[compile]
712/100: 126582[dhrystone] 80.369522[MIPS] 9.44[gfx v/v] 9.52[gfx d/v] 18.327635s[webster] 35.44598s[compile]
715/75 CRX24: 105263[dhrystone] 66.833649[MIPS] 5.936[gfx v/v] 6.432[gfx d/v] 20.026428s[webster] 38.612015s[compile]

Seems to indicate that the HPs have slower graphics and processors, but turn in better overall application performance.

Just for the sake of argument, here's the NWbench result for VMware Fusion on my Mac Pro. The dhrystone and MIPS ratings are not shown because they complete faster than the timer resolution of the dhrystone benchmark (resulting in scores of zero).

Fusion: 0.048[gfx v/v] 0.016[gfx d/v] 6.15974s[webster] 4.819834s[compile]

The TCX in the SS5 is clearly a pretty nice framebuffer. I never tested the SS20, so I can't comment on how the SuperSPARC or cgfourteen stack up. NEXTSTEP won't run on the 170 MHz SS5 (as the turboSPARC processor is not supported). I would expect the HP 735/135 to be faster than the 712/100 in all respects but I never tested it, either.

vwarez wrote: Now, the only issue I have is the password to access the OS.. I believe that this model will only support AIX 4.1 or lower. The search is on for the OS.....

It will support 4.2 in theory, but you'll lose graphics (lft only) without hacking in filesets from 4.1.

You can reset the passwords by booting the CD install media, selecting a maintenance shell, mounting the drive, and editing the files in /etc/security directly. Any 4.1.4 or 4.1.5 disc will work; there's no special release that's needed for the laptops.

geo wrote: is this still repairable? i don't have experience with AIX, but this screen, in what state is this? PROM/BIOS?

That is the power-on self-test screen. If you press one or the other of the F-keys (F2? F4? I always have to check) when that screen is on, you can get into the various self-test/configuration modes.

I forget what happens if no boot device is found, but it may very well just sit there at that screen forever when that happens. It could be a bad sign, or it could just be an unformatted drive. Check that there's one even installed, by lifting up the keyboard. It just snaps in place at the front, with a hinge at the back. The hard drive will be clearly visible underneath, at the left (battery on the right, removable media bay in the middle; memory cards underneath all of that).

If it's missing, you might have some difficulty finding a replacement, since it uses a 2.5" SCSI drive in a special carrier. But you could make it work with a "normal" SCSI drive connected to the port on the rear.

Tight lipped? I told you that this was absolutely, utterly useless without an AS/400 host. You chose not to believe me. There wasn't much else to say.

hamei wrote: real-world items that do stuff like pumping out sinking ships

Making bilge pumps for forty years makes you a domain expert on innovation?