[rescue] Sun 3/50 scsi boot string

[Jonathan Chapman]

Kurt,

IIRC the cutoff is ROM v2.6 as the first version that supports booting IDs other than 0, so that makes sense!

I had the replacement tantalum capacitor in stock. I believe I noted the capacity and voltage in the writeup, but you may find that the replacements are very expensive. Let me know if you require one, as I have many.

Sounds like you've got a nice set of Sun3 boxes! I've got the 3/50, a 3/160, and a new-to-me 3/260 I haven't gone through yet. The 3/50 was my first Sun3 machine, and I was thrilled​ to find it had the RAM upgrade, as that's of course one of the biggest drawbacks to the 3/50. Just this week, I finally got an ECL monochrome monitor for the 3/50, which works but is currently being recapped as it was showing signs of a failing cap in the cathode supply circuit.

W.R.T. RAM sizing, that upgrade board really does give 8 MB RAM on my system, so that's correct -- just not possible with a stock​ Sun 3/50.

Thanks,
Jonathan

------- Original Message -------
On Sunday, December 25th, 2022 at 14:18, Kurt Nowak via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:

> Hi Jonathan,
>
> Thanks! Yes, that is what I had suspected as well since mine will also boot with ID 0 - sd(0,0,0). I'll download the latest and greatest ROM image from sun3arc and flash a new one after I order a new blank. Mine is not super old, its v2.3 where the latest sun3arc has is v2.8. But maybe old enough to not cause it to boot sd(0,18,0). We'll see...
>
> Also thanks for doing the writeup. Mine also has the same corroded tantalum capacitor but the leads are still intact. Would you happen to have a source/PN for the one you replaced it with? Its hard to read the script on the current one. The machine seems to run fine but I would feel more comfortable replacing it since I've heard bad things about tantalum caps exploding. I also had the dead battery and one of the micro fuses was missing. I replaced the fuse but noticed that both holders were really loose in holding the fuses, so I'll look at replacing those holders. I see both Mouser and Newark carry the LittleFuse series 273 micro fuses - hopefully they have the holders as well.
>
> Generally the machine works great so far as a diskless client off of my 3/60. I have a small Sun3 "zoo" happening at the moment (3/80,3/60,3/110,3/160 and 3/50) with my goal of getting them all up and running with SunOS 4.1.1. Both the 3/80 and 3/60 are up and running and have the latest ROMs and can boot off of CD. Since the 3/60 is the common arch for the remaining creatures I decided to install the OS as a heterogenous server, serving up the 3/50 and 3/110 (eventually the 3/160 too) as diskless clients. But my goal was to make those stand alone machines, so following the instructions in Appendix C of the 4.1.1 installation manual I was able to do a remote CD installation on both machines. Thanks to Jay York for providing a pair of old Seagate drives along with other stuff for those two.
> Regarding the main board, it was interesting to see what yours looks like. My configuration is a bit different - I have an interesting 4/8MB add-on Helios expansion board with 4 empty slots. Maybe this was a pretty common upgrade - I don't know. I don't have any spares so I'll leave it as 4MB. Speaking of memory, yeah I, don't know why it always seems to show double the amount of memory that is physically installed when the machine goes through POST - mine also comes up with having 8MB. This seems to be common to all my Sun 3 machines though. Even the 3/80 has 12MB installed but shows up as having 24MB.
>
> Here are some pictures:
> https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19KeBZffqrzuo1eMb-m21trSNLI3ixRqq?usp=share_link
>
> -Kurt
>
> On Sat, Dec 24, 2022 at 4:52 PM Jonathan Chapman via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
>
>> Kurt,
>>
>> You probably have an older ROM revision that'll only boot off sd0, found that out myself:
>>
>> http://www.glitchwrks.com/2022/09/19/sun-3-50
>>
>> Bit about booting off sd0 is near the bottom of the writeup.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Jonathan
>>
>> ------- Original Message -------
>> On Saturday, December 24th, 2022 at 14:59, Kurt Nowak via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
>>
>>> I just finished installing SunOS 4.1.1 on my Sun 3/50 and the disk is set at ID 3 which in traditional Sun3 maps to sd6. My other Sun3's boot with >b sd(0,18,0) but the 3/50 wont accept that. I looked in the Sun FE handbook on bitsavers but couldn't find anything there unique to the 3/50. I'm pretty sure my SCSI chain is ok or the installation wouldn't have worked. Any clues?
>>>
>>> -Kurt
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> rescue list - http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://sunhelp.org/pipermail/rescue_sunhelp.org/attachments/20221226/fed57696/attachment-0001.html>