Hi Andreas,
great that there are still some people looking into the
old SPARCbooks from Tadpole. I have got a 3GX up and running.
> Sadly there seems to be almost no documentation available
> in the net for a Sparcbook 2
Yeah, that is really sad. Also do not have got any information!
Just t
Hi Jon!
> think the Bendix G-15 had cassettes for the 5-level tape
> they used.
Aha, interesting! Did a short search, but have not been able to
find a picture of a casette. Just a pile of paper tape instead ;-)
https://images.app.goo.gl/HYqkpYHJUxZeGfiA8
> of mylar tape instead of paper. OS
Thanks Bill, that is cool! So failing display means it is black, but you hear
it booting from the HDD? Do you know what type of NVRAM was used in the
PowerLite? (Would be interesting if their NVRAM also has a "stop oscillator"
bit which I attribute to the problems)
Thanks Jonathan for the offer. Meanwhile X-rayed the 1643 as well and connected
a really big battery. Here again: Had to start the oscillator before the
UltraBook passed the POST and turned on the display - it is up and running
again now - UltraBook and UltraBook IIi restored. So my final report
After some silence I can report SUCCESS on that issue! YEAH! Happy I am:
After first repairing the TopMax programmer, digging out my old GALEP3
prgrammer and building a very special adapter socket for the DS1553, I was able
to have a detailed analysis:
(1) The DS1643 and DS1553 chips can stop t
Before heading to some short vacation first of all: Thanks to all contributers!
I built an adapter for reading the NVRAMs in my programmers (CE2 pulled to VCC
using a resistor, pin 1 isolated) - this adapter us usable for both the DS1643
and the DS1553. The TopMax2 software has got a bug - it r
Yeah - reading the source code of QEMU I found the structure of the NVRAM -
EVEN BETTER there was a WEB page with a good description of the various NVRAMs
on Sun machines up to Ultra1. Yes, there "was".
FORTUNATELY via archive.org, that page can be accessed - Tad- here it
is:
https:/
Hi Ethan, thanks for suggesting MAME - did some research and somehow I do not
think it emulates UltraSparc but only 32bit Sarc. But saw, that QEMU has a
UltraSparc emulation and they...
https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/target-sparc64.html
...explicitly claim that a NVRAM is emulated, alt
Hi Santo, as promised I took pictures of the caddy of UltraBook and UltraBook
II (it is the same). The harddrives are slim PATA notebook drives and I ran
(until failure) 10GB...160GB drives in the UltraBooks.
CAUTION: Fitting a PATA SSD did not work for me - somehow they are probably to
fast for
Hi Jonathan, will try that soon and I have got GALEP3 and a TopMax, so reading
a 1643 with pins left out should be easy. Zeroing is a good idea for the
beginning - just needing some content there that brings me to the Firmware ;-)
> Hmmm, not sure on that one actually. So it does not boot up at all?
Yes - exactly!
> In the desktop Sun workstations and e.g. the Tadpole SparcBook, a lost NVRAM
> at least
> shows the firmware prompt on the screen (no HOSTID and no ethernet MAC).
Yes, that is different in the UltraBooks. The
@Jonathan: Wow, amazing project in creating the replacement NVRAM. You really
spent lot of time and efforts into that one. To attach the external battery I
took a X-Ray to know where to have access to the battery pins most easily - was
just 1 hour of work but far less cool of course! Thanks for
Hi Ethan - yes, I think that may be a severe issue and getting hands on a
dump/making users aware was already in my first post and therefore it is also
titled "species needs rescue" ;-)
Never looked into MAME - if they run the OpenBoot firmware, that would indeed
be an opion! Thanks for the hint
Hi Jonathan!
> Now the good news is, I can probably make replacements
> for the DS1553W. I already have a prototype replacement
> for the DS1643
Interesting - did you youse some modern technology for
doing that? I already thought to attach a logic analyzer to the
NVRAM to see which bytes are re
Hi Jonathan, thanks for your thoughs. I am still using the same NVRAM, just
with external battery attached, so no Chineese counterfeit.
My hypothesis is: With the battery losing voltage, some bits flip first. They
cause the error message you see and values get set to proper values. But there
are
Hi Santo, thanks for your efforts in taking the vid that looks different from
my behaviour on all UltraBooks!
Drive Caddy: They are silly devices - no smart stuff. I can take pictures on
the weekend and make a wiring chart if you want.
I have a 160GB drive, WD1600BEVE for the OS. Erik.
Did some experiments in removing/swapping NVRAMs and none of my UltraBooks is
reaching the OpenFirmware or even turning on the backlight/LCD, so I have no
way of trying to read the NVRAM contents from there :-(
Symptoms (i.e. behaviour of the LCD display) of the UltraBooks differ with
contents
Played a little around - and the OpenFirmware's "dump" command on my older
SparcBook 3GX (so no Ultra, but 4m architecture) is able to dump virtual
memory. Obeying to the forth syntax, the following command...
1000 100 dump
...dumps 256 bytes starting at address 1000. Of course, reading undefin
Hmmm, did littel reading in the OpenFirmware manual I linked above. There is an
example how to use show-devs for listing the existing devices. The example
contains...
/virtual-memory@0,0
/memory@0,0
/counter-timer@1,f300
/eeprom@1,f200
/openprom
So being lucky, the hex numbers
Yes, but usually that process does only reset the boot flags described in in
the maunal, it does not reset the hardware relevant stuff like the hostID and
MAC (those are lost in the Sparc Stations when the NVRAM is pulled or
completely empty). But of course one can not be entirely sure - I order
Interesting. So you still have got the hostid and the MAC address which might
indicate, that the contents are not completely lost yet. Maybe just a few bits
flipped leading to a wrong checksum (and the diag-switch? being set to true,
leading to lng POST times)?
Exactly that is what I did lot of times with my sparc stations already. But
last week, the UltraBook IIi showed for the first time inconsistent NVRAM and
following that, I replaced the NVRAM by one with an external battery but in my
sillyness I had not saved the contens as I was not aware of the
Hmmm, not sure on that one actually. So it does not boot up at all?
In the desktop Sun workstations and e.g. the Tadpole SparcBook, a lost NVRAM at
least shows the firmware prompt on the screen (no HOSTID and no ethernet MAC).
So there the situation is not as severe as with the UltraBooks where
Just checked the datasheets: The NVRAMs of the UltraBooks I know of are the
DS1643 and the DS1553. Both should be similar enough to be read/write by any
reader that supports the DS1643 or the DS1553. Of course I'd offer creating an
modified Arduino doing the task, to test it and to supply it to
The more are joining the higher the probability, that we will be able to solve
it somehow ;-) What kind of UltraBook do you have got?
Quite sad and I really hate that type of "limited lifetime" :-( Unfortunately
the manufacturer RDI/Cupertino/US was acquired in 1998 by Tadpole and they
dissolved in "General Dynamics" in 2005. The remains are now taken care of by
Flextronics/Flex, but I do not have got much hope, they will be
Hi there,
in the last weeks my last two working UltraBooks died. Today I investigated the
problem
and obviously in these RDI made notebooks, the NVRAMs not only contain the boot
information,
the host ID and the MAC address but also the hardware configuration.
Hence: Once the NVRAM is complete
..with this generation of Sparc book I saw, that the internal
power supplies die very often over the years: These orange
tantalum capacitors go short leading to destruction of other
components if connected to power after some years (DCDC con-
verter's inductivity and power transisto
..not to forget, that the 400Hz equipment was readily available
from powering aircraft on the ground before the engines take
over. So although not cheap, they where cheaper than a custom
design at an arbitrary new frequency
> Incidentally, a way to get three phase power at a frequency of your
> choice is to use a "variable frequency drive".
Please be careful with this! Have quite some experience in building
three phase inverters from such small boxes for my various avionics
projects.
(1) The normal ones rect
..not to forget, that the 400Hz equipment was readily available
from powering aircraft on the ground before the engines take
over. So although not cheap, they where cheaper than a custom
design at an arbitrary new frequency
Hi Jos!
> in the UK around 1960 the Argus 200 was developed to control the Bristol
> Bloodhound anti-aircraft rocket. This computer was one of the very first
> transistor-based control computers.
Absolutely - in these days Ferranti and Elliott where competitors on
the European market for defecn
Hm, just adding that my venerable SUN SPARC UII runs WEB server, ssh, web
proxy, sub-version, and is my "cloud" via rsync and of course serves email.
Over the last 7 years it got rebooted only twice, because the provider needed
to relocate it in the server farm and during one of these reboots we
Hi Jeffrey,
thanks for your answer and recollections on the famous hammer test ;-)
> hangar. I was mesmerized as two weights were released from two chains
> on opposite sides of the machine as it was running. The two weights
There is a youtube video showing some of the testing...
https:/
Hi Bill,
thanks again for your considerations!
--- Bill Degnan wrote:
> BTW - there is no evidence that the 1601 was not produced
> at all, is there?Â
No, there is no evidence. But they founded ROLM in 1969 and they
had no experience on designing a MIL-SPEC computer (until than
only highly
Hi Bill!
--- Bill Degnan wrote:
> I may have more 1601 stuff, if I find I will scan and post
Many thanks for your efforts - these documents look very interesting.
Given the fact, that Rolm was founded in 1969, I really guess that by
the time the brochure was printed, no running hardware existe
Hi Bill,
many thanks for the efforts spent on scanning those fantastic
brochures. I have some of the 1602s and a MSE14, but has any one
out there seen a 1601 in real life? Was this really sold or was
it still a paper-machine as it was replaced by the 1602?
Any comment from contemporary witnes
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