General Stuff(tm)

[rubber_jonnie]

It was almost like being back at work today... well, work in the last noughties anyway.

Seeing as the ZX Spectrum on 16 bit computers was no-longer possible I've switched over to not quite retro for my display in Cambridge so need a couple of Sun workstations set up so I can use them to play games, specifically xpilot and netrek... maybe Quake & Quake II as well. (OK, maybe a 19 year old workstation is retro-ish and xpilot was originally written in 1991.)

Anyway, the Sun Ultra 45 was running its original copy of Solaris which has a few bugs which could affect the show so it needed to be upgraded.

The first major issue is the DVD drive... it doesn't like reading writable DVDs. Fine if you're installing from official DVDs but rubbish if you need to install from downloads. I found Solaris 10 U5 and U7 (the target, the last version before Oracle bought Sun and changed the licensing) online. I first copied the original drive onto a backup drive as it has the Sun Studio 11 compilers installed and licensed.

So, the rest of the day has been installing the new version of the OS and this evening upgrading to Update 7... whilst listening to "Sky 2" on LP.


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And xpilot runs fine...


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Oh, and on the SAAB front, looks like good news as the restorer thinks he can do a good job on the car. It'll just cost money.

Nice, I have been wondering about a Sun workstation, but I am getting limited on space, might have to lose an Octane if I want to do it.

Good new, tho less so on it costing s on the Saab front, though less so on it costing money!

[stephen_usher]

Seeing as the Sun Ultra 45 is going to the games themed retro computing festival in Cambridge next month and it's going to be playing 1990s UNIX games (plus maybe Quake II) I thought that it needed pimping out a bit. After all gaming machines need coloured lights inside don't they?

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The only problem with this machine today, other than trying to get modern software to compile, was that the main hard drive decided to start to die. Thankfully I was able to dd enough onto a replacement drive before it fully turned up its toes. It failed after all the important partitions had been copied over, just a mostly empty /export/home2 partition data was lost and that hosted just a swap file.

[HigashiJun]

Gorgeous !

[stephen_usher]

Well, the machines are getting there for the event a week tomorrow...

Positive: I've managed to get Quake II running using OpenGL
Negative: Xpilot has stopped seeing the network server on one machine.

Oh well!

[stephen_usher]

The festival event went well in the end. Both machines behaved themselves in the end.

I also picked up a free Sun SPARCstation 2, which I have a quick look at this evening.

The NVRAM battery was dead, as usual, and the power supply fan wasn't working. Otherwise seems in an OK state, though without a graphics card.

Oiled up the CPU fan and it's now turning at least.

I replaced the NVRAM chip with a new, sealed in the anti-static bag from Mouser, MT4802.... The machine fails the POST diagnostic test with one of the time of day registers not being able to set the top bit. *sigh* I'm going to have to replace the battery on the old chip now. Still, I may make a video on the heat method to get the resin top off and then fit a CR2032 holder.

[rubber_jonnie]

The festival event went well in the end. Both machines behaved themselves in the end.

Good stuff

I replaced the NVRAM chip with a new, sealed in the anti-static bag from Mouser, MT4802.... The machine fails the POST diagnostic test with one of the time of day registers not being able to set the top bit. *sigh* I'm going to have to replace the battery on the old chip now. Still, I may make a video on the heat method to get the resin top off and then fit a CR2032 holder.

That's annoying

Had to do the same with one earlier in the year, nice idea to have an all in one unit, but when they're old and the battery goes it's like a massive archaeology expedition to dig out the old battery from an otherwise working IC.

[stephen_usher]

Well, while I was preparing the Blade 150 for the show I had to fix its NVRAM chip (even though it has a CR2032 on the motherboard... but that's not used as it is a legacy from the previous Blade 100 model) and I discovered a neat trick on t'internet... The potting resin is extremely sensitive to heat.

If you warm the top with 100C air and heat it up it will start to go white on the surface as the resin dissociates and becomes pretty weak. After a while of this level of heating it develops the strength and consistency of cheese which has been left to dry for a month so it can be relatively easily pried and broken without damaging the crystal or the battery connections.

I think that I may do a video on it.

[JezC]

Well, while I was preparing the Blade 150 for the show I had to fix its NVRAM chip (even though it has a CR2032 on the motherboard... but that's not used as it is a legacy from the previous Blade 100 model) and I discovered a neat trick on t'internet... The potting resin is extremely sensitive to heat.

If you warm the top with 100C air and heat it up it will start to go white on the surface as the resin dissociates and becomes pretty weak. After a while of this level of heating it develops the strength and consistency of cheese which has been left to dry for a month so it can be relatively easily pried and broken without damaging the crystal or the battery connections.

I think that I may do a video on it.

That would be interesting to see @stephen_usher if you do get a chance at some point....

[felicemaggie]

Just hoping that it doesn't stink too badly, with the reference to cheese

[rubber_jonnie]

Well, while I was preparing the Blade 150 for the show I had to fix its NVRAM chip (even though it has a CR2032 on the motherboard... but that's not used as it is a legacy from the previous Blade 100 model) and I discovered a neat trick on t'internet... The potting resin is extremely sensitive to heat.

If you warm the top with 100C air and heat it up it will start to go white on the surface as the resin dissociates and becomes pretty weak. After a while of this level of heating it develops the strength and consistency of cheese which has been left to dry for a month so it can be relatively easily pried and broken without damaging the crystal or the battery connections.

I think that I may do a video on it.

Be interesting to see that