I kept a few things, including two of the 3 slot giant "pizza" boxes.
These have an actual 3 slot sun VME backplane.
In this was, they are unlike the pizza boxes for the sun 3/60 and the
like which only supply power.
I run a 2 card setup consisting of a 3/260 along with an 16M ECC memory
board in one of them.
This now somewhat surprises me, as I have learned that the 3/260 can
pull up to 22 amps of current. That this works along with the ECC
card suggests that the power supply in these boxes can deliver at least
30 amps!
These boxes sometimes had stabilizing "wings" (forming a base) that allowed them to be set vertically alongside of a desk. I have long ago removed and discarded these wings.
The other one is on my "workbench" right now. It is labeled Sun 3/140. As it turns out a 3/140 uses the same cpu board as the 3/160 and 3/180, just in this 3 slot box rather than the big 12 slot chassis the 3/160 used. In my box is a Sun 3/160 board along with a Parity systems memory board in the second slot. I think the Parity system board holds an additional 4M of ram, and could hold more (up to 12M?) if it was fully populated.
To remove boards from the box, you need a 2mm Allen key. You also should take care using the extractor levers as the 40 year old plastic composite they are made of may be getting old and brittle.
Which way is up? Lay the box on your workbench with the power connector on your left and it is right side up. This is important, because I always put the master board in the bottom slot (requiring you to know up from down). In the system I am now working with the 3/160 board goes in the bottom slot and the memory expansion goes in the middle slot right above it.
Next we connect a serial cable. I have a USB to serial cable with a PL2303 chip. Linux is happy to call it ttyUSB0. I find a 9 to 25 pin cable and also need a null modem adapter. I type some returns and get a ">" prompt from the monitor.
With the switch in either the DIAG or NORM position, pressing reset gives me (after perhaps a 10 second wait) :
Watchdog Reset! >With the switch set to NORM, a power cycle gives:
EEPROM: Using RS232 A port. Selftest Completed. Sun Workstation, Model Sun-3/160M. ROM Rev 3.0, 4MB memory installed, Serial #17403. Ethernet address 8:0:20:1:DB:0, Host ID 110043FB. Testing 4 Megabytes of Memory ... Completed. Auto-boot in progress... EEPROM boot device...Boot: ie(0,0,0) ie: No Carrier ie: No Carrier Requesting Internet address for 8:0:20:1:DB:0With the switch set to DIAG, a power cycle gives:
Boot PROM Selftest PROM Checksum Test DVMA Reg Test Context Reg Test Segment Map Wr/Rd Test Segment Map Address Test Page Map Test Memory Path Data Test NXM Bus Error Test Interrupt Test TOD Clock Interrupt Test MMU Access Bit Test MMU Access/Modify Bit Test MMU Invalid Page Test MMU Protected Page Test Parity Test Memory Size = 0x00000004 Megabytes Memory Test (Testing 0x00000004 MBytes) Testing... Selftest passed. Type a character within 10 seconds to enter Menu Tests... (e for echo mode) EEPROM: Using RS232 A port. Selftest Completed. Sun Workstation, Model Sun-3/160M. ROM Rev 3.0, 4MB memory installed, Serial #17403. Ethernet address 8:0:20:1:DB:0, Host ID 110043FB. Type a character within 10 seconds to enter Menu Tests... Diagnostic Auto-boot in progress... Invalid device = '' >At this point LED 6 (counting from 1 on the left) is blinking at about 1 Hz.
All very good. Note that the ROM version is 3.0.
Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org