[rescue] Sun Voyager: a) great story b) repair question c) looking for a new home

[Walter Belgers]

Hi,

Some Sun SPARCstation Voyager (SS240) stuff:

Great story

I got a mail from a lady who said she had a Sun Voyager in her attic, stashed
away for 20+ years, not knowing what to do with it. She found my website and
contacted me and we got mailing. She said her late husband got it when he left
his company (Philips) some 15~20 years ago. It was a gift from his colleagues.
So far, nothing very interesting. Until she mentioned the system had belonged
to Frank P. Carrubba.

Frank Carrubba, (co?-)inventor of RISC, worked at IBM and HP and then became
CTO for Philips (1991-1997). I happened to work at the IT division of Philips
from 1994-2000, which was at the time on the same campus where the board of
directors were. We once got a call from Frank asking "the IT people" to help
him in setting up this new Voyager he got as a present from Scott McNealey. So
me and a colleague went over and helped him (I can't remember what we did
exactly).

Fast forward 25 years and this exact same system turns up in an attic close to
where I live! The lady was wondering what to do with it. She had seen that
Voyagers are quite expensive on eBay. I suggested I could have a look at the
specs and to see if it was in working order and she agreed. A change to see
the thing again!


Repair question

This was a nice trigger to take the Voyagers in my collection to see if they
still worked. I have three. One is a black&white (bwtwo) Voyager. When I got
it, I was disappointed that it was not the colour version, but I now believe
that the black and white version is rarer. This one has a 810MB drive, 80MB
RAM and runs Solaris 2.6. The NVRAM has an empty battery but other than that
it works and is complete with keyboard/mouse/cables/carrying case.
Then I have a colour version that I got from a Sun employee. Cosmetically very
nice, comes with original documentation, carrying case etc. 810MB drive, 80MB
RAM and I fixed the NVRAM battery.

And then there's another colour Voyager with 810MB drive, 64MB memory and all
the accessories (and empty NVRAM battery). Now this one did not seem to boot,
nothing on the screen. I hooked up a serial terminal that showed it was
working. I then attached an external monitor which also worked. I opened it
up, reseated the video plugs on the mainboard and the screen connector, but
that didn't help. I can't see any obvious problems.
Question: is there an obvious cause for LCD failures / are there easy ways to
troubleshoot/repair this? The repair guide says: just replace the LCD. That
will be hard..


Looking for a new home

I just got back from going to the nice lady. I wonder if Frank is still
around, I couldn't find any address/email info. The system booted (slowly: the
NVRAM battery was also empty of course). The systems looks in good working
order and also has all the hardware that normally comes with it (no
documentation however). This Voyager only has the 340MB drive and 64MB of RAM.
It booted into Solaris 2.5 but wanted a password. I just cracked it, I now
know Frank's favourite band. The hostname was "patricia" and I found on the
net that Frank was married to Patricia, so that matches the story.

Solaris 2.5 came out November 1995, 2.6 in July 1997. So it will have probably
been 1996 that my colleague and I installed Solaris on it. Nothing else was on
the harddrive. It looks like it was installed, Frank set the root password and
since 1996 is has never been used again. At the first boot, the file systems
were clean, so it must have last been booted by Frank, as he knew the root
password (the only user on the system).

Anyway, she was not wanting to put the system back in the attic. But she would
like some money for it. I normally don't pay for Suns, I'd rather trade/swap,
but of course she's not waiting for another Sun :) It was therefore not
donated to me. Instead, she would like me to find somebody that appreciates it
and pay a reasonable amount for it, not as much as some Voayagers go for
nowadays. Is anybody here interested in obtaining this Voyager? Mind you, you
mind end up with my other Voayager with 64MB/340MB, because I would like to
keep the actual system that has the special story attached. In that case,
you'd get a 64MB/340MB/CG6/Sol2.6/extra's/working NVRAM battery. Shipping (or
pickup) will be from the Netherlands.

Cheers,
Walter.
--
Walter Belgers
walter at belge.rs -=- https://belge.rs/