[rescue] Wanted - 3B2

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: wa2egp at att.net
" 
" -------------- Original message ----------------------
" From: adh at an.bradford.ma.us (Sandwich Maker)
" >
" > " From: wa2egp at att.net
" > " 
" > " Somebody mentioned the 3B1
" > " but it was similar to the 7300 (I do not know what the difference
" > " was).  I modded mine so it can take larger hard drives.
" > 
" > the 3b1 case had a bump to accept full-height 5.25" drives; the 7300's
" > smooth top only allowed half-height drives.  the 3b1 ps was slightly
" > more powerful too.  otherwise there was no difference.
" 
" I remember now.  Probably the beefier power supply was for the power
" those full height drives would pull.

yup.

" Actually, I was toying with the
" idea of putting in two 3.5 drives in place of the 5.25 drive.  I would
" fit if I swung the drives sideways.

i did that, along with the unofficial 2-drive hack.  used a pair of
80M seagates.  fit pretty well.  alas, the system board died shortly
after that, for reasons i'm pretty sure were unconnected.

i still have that dead system in my basement iirc.

" Too bad they didn't go one more
" version of that machine.  The next one would have been color.

i remember that!  but even if they hadn't, it would've been easy to
revise the old b&w to include greyscale.

they were also supposedly -this-close- to releasing sVr3 for the 3b1
when it was canned, with a substantial performance improvement.  the
3b1 os from convergent was actually berkeley based though svid
compliant.

since i had the hardware manual [with full schematics], around '95 i
toyed with generating and releasing equation files to program
off-the-shelf 40-pin fpgas with all of the system board random logic
so that 3b1 clones could easily be made but i never got around to it.
i also wanted to do a qic-40 floppy tape driver.  i still don't know
enough about driver programming today.

the one schematic the manual lacks is the video chip.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought