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Sandwich Maker | 1 Jul 2009 05:16
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Re: TGZ framebuffer in a SparcSTATION 1+

" From: silvercreekvalley <silvercreekvalley <at> yahoo.com>
" 
" 
" Thanks for all the replies, I checked the card in a
" Sun CLASSIC and it worked fine, so I'm sure everyone
" is right concerning the compatibility issue.
" 
" I'll try and track down a GX card. If anyone has one
" for sale in the UK do let me know.

irc a gx and tgx should look exactly the same to the obp.

sunshack.org has rom images for many sun obp; he may have an obp2 for
the ss1+.  can you burn roms?
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh <at> an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought
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ben | 1 Jul 2009 21:46
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Migration to AMD and OpenSolaris

Hi Folks

I managed to escape the family for a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon
and after visiting some book shops I had a look in a second hand computer
shop here in Brussels. Poking around I found a Java Workstation W1100z
with two really nice matching Sun screens, it's rare to find anything
other than run of the mill PCs here so I was hard pressed to contain my
excitement. The shop didn't appear to know what they had, the guy told me
they'd installed XP but "when compared to other PCs we have it's not up to
much". Music to my ears of course and I couldn't resist and bought it.

I struggled home with the screens on the tram. I went back on Monday at
lunch time to collect the computer itself with the car. It was less than
half the price of the same model on eBay and I think got a real bargain.
2Gb of RAM, 2Ghz AMD64 processor and an 80Gb hard disk. Not much cop as a
PC these days but great for a UNIX box.

I've spent the last couple of nights installing OpenSolaris and I have to
admit that I am smitten. I was sick as the proverbial parrot when Apple
moved to Intel and I always thought I'd be a die-hard Sparc fan but this
machine is faster, quieter, and will be cheaper to upgrade than the sparc
based gear.

The only trouble is that it makes my tricked out SunBlade 1000 a little
obsolete. Such a shame as I'd spent quite a bit upgrading it.

First impressions of OpenSolaris are "wow look at all the eye candy!
*drool*" but I'm having some difficulties with Oracle and Asterisk so I'm
not consigning the Sunblade to the recycling center just yet. The nvidia
card was not supported by the latest release of OpenSolaris as nvidia had
(Continue reading)

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silvercreekvalley | 1 Jul 2009 23:37
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WTB 3/80 colour framebuffer


Having got my 3/80 up and running, I'm now on the look out
for a colour graphics card. These are a bit tricky to find...

Unfortunately the 3/80 has a totally different layout to the
3/60 so you cant use a framebuffer from the 3/60, which is a
shame because these are reasonably common.

The colour cards which are known 3/80 compatible are:-

501-1443
501-1505

If anyone has one of these let me know (off list). I would
pay up to $300 for a known working colour framebuffer for
a 3/80 - they are pretty rare - but would make it a lot more
usable in my current setup.

Thanks

Ian.
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Alan Perry | 2 Jul 2009 04:29

Re: Migration to AMD and OpenSolaris

ben <at> ipcress.net wrote:
> Has anyone else made the leap? Thoughts on sparc and the future? I notice
> OpenSolaris is numbered "5.11" which seems to make it plain that it's the
> future according to Sun.
>   
Since I work for Sun in the x86 kernel group, obviously I have made the 
leap.  Mostly.

I say mostly because none of my personal sparc boxes are capable of 
running OpenSolaris (or even Solaris 10).  I run the latest public 
release of OpenSolaris on my personal x86 boxes (including an Intel Mac).

As far as OpenSolaris and "5.11", some of the names and the relationship 
between those names can be confusing.  There is OpenSolaris, the open 
source codebase based on Sun's Solaris codebase.

And then there is OpenSolaris, a distro of the OpenSolaris codebase.  
There have been three releases of OpenSolaris, the distro - 2008.05, 
2008.11 and 2009.06.  It uses the new installer and IPS package stuff 
and fits on a CD.

Another distro is Solaris Express Community Edition, which is a couple 
of build behind the current internal build.  This is also referred to by 
the internal codename Solaris Nevada.  This uses the old installer with 
everything on a DVD.

Other distros include BelenIX, Jaris, MartUX (for sparc), MilaX, 
NexentaOS and SchilliX.

Solaris 10 is not open source.  Right now, there is no such thing as
(Continue reading)

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Alan Perry | 22 Jul 2009 05:35

Looking for a Voyager display


I have a SPARCstation Voyager with a dead display.  Does anyone here 
have a Voyager with a working display but otherwise dead?

The one that I have has the carrying case and accessories, so it would 
be nice to get the display working.

alan
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Thorsten Nitsch | 22 Jul 2009 22:53
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Re: Looking for a Voyager display

Alan Perry wrote:
> I have a SPARCstation Voyager with a dead display.  Does anyone here 
> have a Voyager with a working display but otherwise dead?
No, unfortunately my dead Voyager has a dead display too.
The reason I'm answering is, that I was thinking about replacing the 
dead display with a generic display from some sort of electronic stuff 
vendor (eg. Pollin in Germany). I've seen some fairly cheap (around 10€ 
(15$ more or less)) DSTN displays and was thinking if it's possible to 
use those as a replacement.
Anyone out there who ever tried this?

> The one that I have has the carrying case and accessories, so it would 
> be nice to get the display working.
I got another Voyager in the meantime (B/W, display with some errors) but
yes, it's nice to have a working display, so I can fully understand you ;-)

Thorsten
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Alan Perry | 23 Jul 2009 09:30

Re: Looking for a Voyager display

Thorsten Nitsch wrote:
> Alan Perry wrote:
>> I have a SPARCstation Voyager with a dead display.  Does anyone here 
>> have a Voyager with a working display but otherwise dead?
> No, unfortunately my dead Voyager has a dead display too.
The problem with mine is the tube that illuminate the LCD panel.  I had 
an OEM part number for just the light tubes and reflector, but, when I 
looked into ordering one last year, the cost was too much (almost $400).

I have booted the system using a serial port console and everything else 
seems fine.
> The reason I'm answering is, that I was thinking about replacing the 
> dead display with a generic display from some sort of electronic stuff 
> vendor (eg. Pollin in Germany). I've seen some fairly cheap (around 
> 10€ (15$ more or less)) DSTN displays and was thinking if it's 
> possible to use those as a replacement.
> Anyone out there who ever tried this?
This should be possible, but I haven't tried it.

alan
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Sandwich Maker | 23 Jul 2009 16:03
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Re: Looking for a Voyager display

" From: Alan Perry <alanp <at> snowmoose.com>
" 
" Thorsten Nitsch wrote:
" > Alan Perry wrote:
" >> I have a SPARCstation Voyager with a dead display.  Does anyone here 
" >> have a Voyager with a working display but otherwise dead?
" > No, unfortunately my dead Voyager has a dead display too.
" The problem with mine is the tube that illuminate the LCD panel.  I had 
" an OEM part number for just the light tubes and reflector, but, when I 
" looked into ordering one last year, the cost was too much (almost $400).

if the deadness is just the tube, how hard would it be to rig
something up with high brightness white leds?
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh <at> an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought
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Alan Perry | 25 Jul 2009 01:01

Sun 13W3-VGA adapters


I am trying to hook up a flat-panel display to my old Sun systems 
(Classic/LX/IPC/IPX/Voyager) through a 13W3 to VGA adapter cable.  I can 
hook them up to an old Sun CRT and the video works fine.  However, when 
I hook them up to a couple of different, modern LCD displays, I get nothing.

Any ideas what is up?

alan
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Alan Perry | 25 Jul 2009 01:22

Source for Sun NVRAM/IDPROM?


A couple of my sun4m systems need new NVRAM parts.  Anyone know where to 
get them these days?

alan
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Gmane