[rescue] Axil320?

[Johan van Zanten]

William Barnett-Lewis via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
> Snooping on Eprey, I saw a listing for an Axil320 Sparcstation 20
> clone. Not a whole lot of info online that I find, apparently Axil was
> a Hyundai subsidiary? And it's supposed to be an exact clone.

> Anyone have experience with this model of clone? Anyway to tell what
> the module is from the part number on it? 323-0014-01. Didn't see
> anything on Axil or Ross at Bitsavers, alas.

I dimly remember working with a few clones back in the 90s and early 00s,
Axil and Tatung. I don't recall any significant functional differences as
far as how they ran SunOS 4 or 5. The hardware design and build seemed
more barebones, like just a "normal" PC clone, distinctly different from
the snazzier Sun designs with the lilac-colored highlights, beveled edges,
(etc.) that appeared with the sun4, SPARC-based machines. Although,
ironically, the klunky metal cases of the clones may have held up better
over time compared with the plastic waffle-side cases of the real Sun
machines.

  While i trust my 30-year-old recollection that the Axil clones were
functionally the same, i doubt every last component was fully compatible,
and -- totally just speculating -- i would advise a little caution around
potentially Axil-specific components like EEPROMs.  I think some RAM and
CPUs would be interchangeable between the cloned models and their
originals (like the Axil 320 & SPARC 20), but other components could be
very different. Axil may have used an alternative to Sun OpenBOOT PROM,
too.

There's some info in the URLs below; of particular note in the second
(sidneys1.com) about a different machine , the Axil Ultima 1:

 "Perhaps the saddest story here, and a testament to the quality and
 reliability of original Sun hardware, this Sun clone initially had some
 struggles booting, and wouldn’t recognize keyboard input. After a couple
 power cycles, however, it stopped booting altogether."


https://boxes-of-tat.blogspot.com/p/axil-320-sparcstation-20-clone-hieracium.html


https://sidneys1.com/retrocomputing/2024/10/04/booting-sun-sparc-servers.html

  best, johan