[SunRescue] 4/6xx capabilities?

[James Lockwood]

On Tue, 11 Jan 2000, Martin Frost wrote:

> Has anyone ever tried just the CPU in a 3/60 case? Leaving the VME bus
> floating could cause problems, and the power supply probably wouldn't
> be up to the job, but it would be nice if it worked... ;)

Been there, done that.  The powersupply provides enough amperage at +5 and
+12 (barely), but does not supply -12.  This will keep the onboard serial
ports from working.

The big problem is heat.  I modified a 3/60 case with a long low-profile
squirrel-cage blower a few years back and that did the job.  But unless a
low-profile desktop case is absolutely vital and you really want to hack
things up, a 3 slot x10 case is a much better bet.  Plug and play.  The
stock 3/60 fan is woefully underpowered, even a 4/300 board is too much
for it.

> Are 600-series memory boards 64 SIMM sockets then? The FAQ just mentions
> that they were available stock in 0Mb and 64Mb, but I can't believe that
> there would be less memory on the expansion boards than the CPU, and
> that would give 640Mb with two expansion boards and 4Mb SIMMs.

32 SIMM sockets.  They take 4MB or 16MB SIMMs in 2 banks of 16.  The
expansion boards have 64 SIMM sockets, yielding a max of 512MB on the
motherboard and 1GB per expansion board (max 2).

Actually, I just thought of something.  With 7 slots on the first P2
segment you could in theory fit 3 memory boards and a CPU board since the
extra slot space taken up by the boards doesn't interface electrically.  I
don't know if there is any provision in the address lines to handle
another board, but a 4/690 (or 4/660 even) with 3.5GB RAM would be quite a
sight.

> Pity they're only parity, so none of the 3/2xx flashing ECC lights. ;)

Agreed.

-James