Subject: Re: My 3/60 keyboard
To: None <port-sun3@NetBSD.ORG>
From: der Mouse <mouse@Collatz.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
List: port-sun3
Date: 12/04/1995 07:52:54
Replying to a buncha messages at once, here....

>> But, now (this happened before too, but I was hoping it would go
>> away), the monitor kind of phases out, like an old tv.
> Do you have your monitor getting electrical power from the connector
> on the back of the CPU case?  If there were some sort of power
> fluctuations in that output from the power supply, it might cause
> problems like you describe.

Well, if you open up the case and have a look, you'll see that the
outgoing-power socket on the pizza-box is behind nothing significant.
The switch, of course, and prolly the fuse (I don't recall precisely,
and don't have one handy to check), but no electronics.

Not that it matters, since that's been tried and hasn't helped.

> lets assume that he has a bad.  He should still get output on his
> monitor.

Not if the console is set to go to ttya, which it quite likely was/is,
or, with some ROMs, if the ROM notices there's no keyboard and decides
to go to ttya anyway.

> I noticed someone else wrote that the correct eeprom address for
> monitor is 1f.  That is correct.  For monocrome monitor, it should be
> set to 12 for color to 16.

Not according to the SunOS 3.5 include file, which has these constants
for that slot:

#define EED_CONS_BW     0x00    /* use b&w monitor for console */
#define EED_CONS_TTYA   0x10    /* use tty A port for console */
#define EED_CONS_TTYB   0x11    /* use tty B port for console */
#define EED_CONS_COLOR  0x12    /* use color monitor for console */
#define EED_CONS_P4     0x20    /* use the P4 monitor for console */

and those match my experience, at least for monochrome and ttya, which
are all I've had occasion to want.  (When you use the eeprom q command,
the numbers are in hex, so you'd be typing just the piece after the 0x
above.)

>> [stuff about high voltage inside the monitor]
> Yes, the anode on the tube has 28.8 kilo volts.  Enough to turn
> anyone to ashes from the bone out.

Um, voltage alone isn't very informative; you can probably work up more
than 28KV just by scuffing across a carpet on a dry day.  (But the
warning _is_ warranted; in a monitor, that high voltage appears across
enough capacitance to actually have some power behind it.  Plenty of
juice to kill if messed with carelessly.  And then there's CRT
implosion danger as well.  Be _damn_ careful inside those things....)

					der Mouse

			    mouse@collatz.mcrcim.mcgill.edu