Hello Khaqq,

I recongnized that having the cover off kept air from rushing over the
blue Ross heatsinks.  I'd heard similar words of "keep the cover and slot
covers on your PC..." for the same reason, and it makes good sense.  In
the case of the stacked Ross processor cards, I also noted how little
space remains between them when they are installed.  And these card
necessarily install in the connectors closest to the motherboard CPU,
which are slightly different than the other (standard?) SBUS connectors.

On the processor SBUS slots there appear to be five or six additional
contacts, probably powers and grounds, in between the rows of fine-pitch
conductors.  So I then knew not to attempt moving one Ross card to an
alternate stack of connectors.

I also learned that (at least this Sparc 10) does not put anything out on
its video card with a bad keyboard attached.  Not sure what's wrong with
the first keyboard I used -- green LEDs blinked and system beeps, but no
video from the Sparc 10 and no response to keys pressed.  Tested later on
an IPX system which does show video despite bad keyboard, it complains "no
keyboard found, putting console on tty1" or similar.

As Sun no longer makes the Sparc type keyboards, is it worth trying to fix
a seemingly dead one?  Back in the late 90's I remember our lead Unix
admin at Portland State University talk about how the new keyboards for
Sparcs cost $110 in their day.  Their market value is far less now, but
I've heard that it's not easy to get a PS/2 keyboard to work with Sparc
systems.


- Ted
                                       -   O
Portland State Aerospace Society    -   _<_\_         Veris Industries
http://psas.pdx.edu                    W >\_             www.veris.com
ted@cs.pdx.edu                        ( ) ( )    ted.havelka@veris.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~





On Sat, 28 Jan 2006, khaqq wrote:

> On Fri, 27 Jan 2006 08:42:17 -0800 (PST)
> Ted Havelka <ted@cs.pdx.edu> wrote:
>
> >
> > Hello All,
> >
> > Thank you for the warnings about the heat from a four-processor Sparc
> > system with the "pizza box" form factor.  While I had the hood open to
> > install a hard drive, I noticed that the dual Ross-processor cards quickly
> > heat up.  Since I'd like this system to work for a long time to come, I
> > took the cautious route and removed one of the Ross processor cards.
>
> Running without the top cover may actually increase overheating, as
> those pizzabox chassis are designed to push air from right to left, which
> does not happen without the cover.
> If you do not need quad CPUs, removing one of the modules will both save
> power and should yield better reliability.
>
> > Remarkably someone had dumped this Sparc 10 about a year ago by the
> > dumpster of the apartment complex where I live in Portland, Oregon.  It
> > had rained all day, and I was literally pouring water out of the chassis
> > of this computer.  After a week's drying I booted up and watched prom
> > messages from an instance of hyperterminal running on an old i80386-based
> > monochrome laptop.  That's how I learned the system was still alive.
>
> Lucky...
>
> khaqq
>