[SunRescue] Sun SBus Expansion box

[Chris Powell]

Hi,

I recently obtained a Sun SBus expansion box (three SBus slots and two
SCSI drive bays in a pizza box). It came with the connection cable
(96-way to 96-way) and an SBus card to put into one of the SPARCstation
SBus slots. This card is not marked Sun, but instead 'Texas Microsystems,
9100A SPARC expansion host card'. I didn't think anything of the card
not being made by Sun as a number of third-parties made SBus expansion
boxes - Aurora, Integrix etc.

Things don't work properly though - powering up a SPARCstation (I've
tried several) with the Texas SBus card installed and cabled to the
expansion box I get an 'fcode error at address xxxxx', and show-sbus
doesn't show the host card. Powering up with any SBus card in the
expansion box, I don't even get to the OpenBoot prompt.

Has anyone any experience of the SBus expansion box? Is the Texas
card usable with the box, or have I obtained the wrong card?

Thanks.


Chris.