Re(2): [SunRescue] 4/6xx capabilities?

[BSD Bob]

[Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...]
> rescue at sunhelp.org,Internet writes:
> >Unless you need more than 512MB RAM (or 128MB using 4MB SIMMs) then you
> >only need the CPU board.

That is plenty for my home server needs......(:+)).... a little web serving
and some archiving, some mail handling,  and a little compiling is all it
needs to do, mostly.  128Mb should do fine in that lowendian loading.
Anything from 32M on up should do.

My thought was to update the deskside with more horsepower and better
drive systems than the 3/160 can support, easily.  The idea is to mount
everything internally rather than hang it all over the computer pit,
as is normally done.   That deskside has all the power and power plugs
for plenty of drives, etc., already there.  Just a better scsi fanout
with less cabling than the early scsi2 or scsi3 stuff is needed.
The later boards should do that well.

> >Stock up on 4MB 80ns or faster 30-pin SIMMs.  You'll need them.

OK.  Do plain old PeeCee 9 pin style sims work, or do I need Sun simms?
Do Apple box simms work?  Our local used Sun man had several of
them he was yanking memory out of... I would suppose that is a good
sign it possibly does?   Apples around here go for two bucks each in
suplus, quite often, and have memory simms in them most of the time.
I am not sure of the speed of the simms, though.  Some of them may
be that fast.

> Actually, if you get an MP processor board, it does have 4 Sbus slots, but
> one of the two processors will block one.  So you get 3 usable Sbus slots
> and 2 Mbus, or 1 Mbus and 4 Sbus.
> 
> The 690 VME backplane is different than the others, and I have yet to get
> my 690 to see the additional RAM card in a 4/260 Chassis

Are there any gotchas in the bus jumper settings in an old style 12 slot
deskside chassis that I would need to be aware of?  If it is the only
card, then I could isolate everything by pulling jumpers, I suppose.
Effectively, it sounds like it would be the only card.

Now, I guess the question is.... anyone got a spare board they don't need
that won't break piggy?  I have no real idea of what they should go for.

And a second question.... will this board run NetBSD sun3 (since it does
not really use VME scsi, which is what is driving me nutso on the other
old machines I have .... NetBSD just won't go well on sun2/sun3 scsi
controllers in my hands).  SunOS is nice, but I need a few of the fixes
of later BSD's.  Me and Solaris, won't work well.

Is the disk controller the same one as in the 3/80 systems (esp?)?
My 3/80 does fine with NetBSD.

Does the thing use those silly abominable battery NVRAM chips?
Those things are a plague.

Is there a diagram of the board (like the FEH things in the
toast Sun4cHandBook site, so I could see what the thing is,
or is there an on-line image of it anywhere?

What specific card part/board numbers do I need to look out for?

Thanks!  Mebbie it is time to rescue my 3/160 boardset to
someone else.....

Bob