At 08:13 PM 9/1/99 -0700, Chris Landauer wrote:
>
>hi, all -
>
>long ago and far away, someone asked what configurations allowed a color
>monitor without needing a useless mono monitor, and i said that i had one such
>working beasty (with a nextdimension board or whatever)
>
>then darrin said:
>
>        It would be useful to report here exactly what external cables and
>        devices are connected to what, although I doubt we need information
>        that would require opening the cube for the first pass.
>
>so here it is:
>configuration of the working cube
>
>mouse is plugged into keyboard
>
>keyboard is plugged into sound box
>(uses connection second from right hand side on sound box -
>connection at right hand side shows that it is for a microphone)
>
>sound box is plugged into cube (lower right hand connection on back of cube)
>
>21" monitor is plugged into cube (lower left hand connection on cube)
>        my other (not yet working) cube has nothing in it on this side
>
>order of the connection sockets from top to bottom on the right hand side of
>the cube (when viewed from the back)
>        dsp (15 pin F)
>        serial B (some round connector type F)
>        serial A (some round connector type F) - works with modem
>        SCSI external
>        printer (9 pin F)
>        RJ-45 F
>        coaxial
>        sound box (19 pin F)
>
>this cube came from an organization that in 1992 had hundreds of them, so they
>might have had a common (for them) but non-standard configuration (since the
>organization no longer exists, i can't really ask anyone about it)
>
>but it works 8-)
>(so far - i'd love to get a larger SCSI disk with a unix-like operating system
>that would boot from it - that's actually why i'm on this list)

This is partially correct information.  Early cubes had a switching power
supply that required the monitor load to operate correctly.  These early cubes
(prior to serial # AAK0016370) can not use the sound boxes with the Dimension
boards and without the MegaPixel display since the sound boxes don't present
sufficient load, and the power supply immediately shuts down.  I have verified
this first hand with my own Dimension setup.  There are directions floating
around out on the web on how to rig a resistor on the MegaPixel port to fool
the power supply and thus boot headless, but I don't know where to find them
off hand.  Perhaps some enterprising person could figure out how to convert a
sound box to provide the proper load.

As for SCSI disks.  The next should take multi-gigabyte disk, the size
restriction is on the size of the partitions which as I recall cannot be large
than 2 gig each.  My own cube has a 2.9 gig Seagate Elite drive with which I
have been very happy.  I have even considered, from time to time, purchasing
one of the Seagate Elite 47, 47 GB MONSTER Drives. 5400 RPM, 11.0 ms access,
Ultra Wide 68 5.25" FH profile 4 MB of cache 5-year manufacturer's warranty
from www.hypermicro.com for only $799.00 in an external configuration. 
--------
Christopher R. Bowman
crb@ChrisBowman.com
http://www.ChrisBowman.com/