[rescue] Blade 100 - X86 CPU option?

[Jonathan Katz]

On Sat, Feb 3, 2018 at 6:19 AM, Brian Archer <archer174 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Dave,
>
>>That would surprise me quite a lot.  What does that jumper nomenclature
> actually say?
>
> I will also be surprised as I've never heard of this being possible. The
> Jumper is labeled:
> "For X86 CPU North Bridge"
> In addition there is a jumper labeled:
> "PS2 Keyboard"

Yes, in pre-production they had the ability to run an AMD K6(?) CPU of
that era, but it required special firmware. There were two reasons for
this, IIRC. The first was they were thinking of offering an x86
workstation as some people did see the writing on the wall with Sparc
at that point in time (circa 2001.) The other reason was that the IIi
was taking a while to get production units and they wanted to test the
ancillary hardware. The box is essentially a PC of that era with
special firmware and a Sparc CPU shoved in, built that way by SUNW to
cut costs on Sparc workstations.