611s, 411 and ELC motherboards needing new homes (UK)

[Shirker-2]

Hi list,

I have the following here:

5 off Type 611 (closed-face) external disk enclosure - all have (~2-4GB)
harddisks fitted

1 off Type 411 (open-face) external disk housing with
CDROM fitted (no caddy)

about 5 off SparcStation ELC motherboard/socket board combos (these were
retained when the ELCs were landfilled due to the monitors having died.
They contain everything that's required (the motherboard, and the small
board containing all rear-panel socketry, without which the motherboard
would be useless) to form a nifty little diskless SPARC machine if you run
them off an AT power supply. There was a helpful web page about exactly
how to do this, but Google can no longer find it. Anyone have a copy
saved?)

All are available free, you pay the shipping and PayPal fees, or collect.
Located in West Yorkshire, UK.

Ed.
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[Peter Corlett]

On 21 Apr 2008, at 19:39, Shirker wrote:
> Hi list,
> I have the following here:


While we're all having clear-outs, I've started to tidy the flat:

http://tripe.cabal.org.uk/archives/geekcycle/
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[der Mouse]

> about 5 off SparcStation ELC motherboard/socket board combos ([...])
> to form a nifty little diskless SPARC machine if you run them off an
> AT power supply.  There was a helpful web page about exactly how to
> do this, but Google can no longer find it. Anyone have a copy saved?)

Well, I don't know whether it's the page you're thinking of, but I
wrote one such.  http://www.sunhelp.org/~mouse/ finds it as of when I'm
typing this.

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[Shirker-2]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2008, der Mouse wrote:

>> about 5 off SparcStation ELC motherboard/socket board combos ([...])
>> to form a nifty little diskless SPARC machine if you run them off an
>> AT power supply.  There was a helpful web page about exactly how to
>> do this, but Google can no longer find it. Anyone have a copy saved?)
>
> Well, I don't know whether it's the page you're thinking of,

That's exactly the page I'm thinking of. Nice work!

What can you Google for to find it? "headless ELC" and "headless sparc
ELC" don't seem to bring it up, neither does "sun elc at psu".

Ed.
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[der Mouse]

>>> There was a helpful web page about exactly how to do this, but
>>> Google can no longer find it.
>> Well, I don't know whether it's the page you're thinking of,
>> [http://www.sunhelp.org/~mouse/]
> That's exactly the page I'm thinking of.  Nice work!

Thank you!

> What can you Google for to find it?  "headless ELC" and "headless
> sparc ELC" don't seem to bring it up, neither does "sun elc at psu".

I'm unable to find it with google just now, despite googling for
relatively distinctive things.  mselc@rodents, for example, doesn't
find anything at all.  I can only conjecture that google's crawler
isn't indexing it for some unknown reason (www.sunhelp.org was refusing
connections on port 80 just minutes ago, though it was working fine
recently and seems to be working OK now; if it does this commonly, it
might be related).

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[Jochen Kunz]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:03:34 -0400 (EDT)
der Mouse <mouse@...> wrote:

> http://www.sunhelp.org/~mouse/
I did somthing similar, so I can add some experience. The ELC CPU board
only needs +5 V. I never found out what the -5 V is used for. I
measured current on all supply voltages and there was no current draw
on -5 V. So I left -5 V unconnected. It needs about 2 A on +5 V with a
single SIMM. Current draw on +-12 V is only a few mA. I suspect +-12 V
is only needed for the serial ports. So I used a PSU from an external
SCSI disk box to feed the ELC CPU board. I get +5 V and +12 V from the
PSU. -5 V is unconnected. I used this simple voltage inverter to
generate the -12 V: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/inverter.pdf

Later I mounted this ELC board in a SCSI disk box together with a spool
disk, a CDROM and a CD-Recorder making it a CDR burn appliance.

Pins C and D on the 6 pin connector are in deed Csync. (One pin is GND, the other is the usual TTL level sync.) Once I connected this Csync and the video signals from the RCA plug to a monitor and got video output from the ELC on the screen.

BTW: You can mount a Sun 600MP VME board in a 3/60 chassis. But the
3/60 chassis doesn't supply -12 V. So you can't use serial console on
the 600MP board. It works fine with a CG6 and keyboard. The voltage
inverter above can solve the -12 V problem quite easily. IIRC the -12 V
line is brought to the PSU from the "backplane", but unconnected at the
PSU. So you can mount the inverter in the PSU section of the chassis.
--


tsch__,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/
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[der Mouse]

> Current draw on +-12 V is only a few mA.

Was that measurement on +12V done with the AUI Ethernet connected to a
transceiver?  I think AUI Ethernet needs +12V, but could be wrong.
(Also, if you're using an AUI multiport, it may not be drawing on +12V
from the AUI connector.)

I should dig out one of mine and do some experimenting - see what goes
dead when I cut various voltages.

> Pins C and D on the 6 pin connector are in deed Csync.  (One pin is
> GND, the other is the usual TTL level sync.)

Which is which?

> Once I connected this Csync and the video signals from the RCA plug
> to a monitor and got video output from the ELC on the screen.

Thank you for all the info.  I've updated my local copy of the page.
Either I've forgotten how I used to update the sunhelp copy or the
access has stopped working, so I can't do the update; I'll be
contacting Mr. Bill about that offlist.

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[Jochen Kunz]

On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:34:57 -0400 (EDT)
der Mouse <mouse@...> wrote:

> > Current draw on +-12 V is only a few mA.
> Was that measurement on +12V done with the AUI Ethernet connected to a
> transceiver?  I think AUI Ethernet needs +12V, but could be wrong.
Now that you say... It was without transceiver. Yes, AUI uses the +12 V
too. So you need to feed it more then a few mA if a transceiver is
used. But +12 V is no big problem. Many PSUs supply it in addition to
+5 V. (Think of SCSI boxes...) The -12 V is "unusual" and you can get
away with that inverter circuit in case of the ELC. (E.g. the MAX232 RS232 transceiver IC uses the same charge pump technic.)

> > Pins C and D on the 6 pin connector are in deed Csync.  (One pin is
> > GND, the other is the usual TTL level sync.)
> Which is which?
I can't remember. It should be trivial to measure whith a Ohm-meter.
(I am to lazzy to dismount my ELC box now.)
--


tsch__,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/
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