>      The clones I've used were somewhat different to the originals:
>      an RDI powerlite - a sun4m portable, a bizarre axil ss5 board
>      upgrade board with 72 and 30 pin slots, a DTK classic in a
>      sparcstation form factor, all distinct (plus a straight ss2 clone)

I thought that RDI actually used one of Sun's boards.  But that
might have been a different model.  Or maybe it was Tadpole...


> > All five came without RAM; and only two had any disk.  The three
> > that I don't have model numbers for have stickers in Japanese.  So
> > far, I haven't tried turning them on.  (I was hoping for some info
> > about what type and sizes of SIMMs they take, and if there are any
> > slot-order dependancies.)
> > 
>      Wish I could help you there - I guess they're 72pin slots?
>      I'd try pairs of matched 60ns or better parity memory.
>      (but which slot matches which is more of a challenge :)

Yep, at least I think they're 72pin slots.  I haven't counted; and
I don't have any spare 72pin SIMMs laying around.  If I haven't
received any more info by the time I'm ready to give it a try, I'll
look more closely at the board to see if the silkscreen gives me
any clues.  If not, the sockets are sort of clustered in pairs.
That is, there is a bigger gap between the second and third than
between the first and second, and so on.  This may be an accident
of wiring layout; but it's probably better than just picking two
at random...  And with any luck, a bad choice will generate ROM
monitor memory test errors that will provide further clues.


A tougher problem will be determining the maximum capacity per SIMM.
According to the sticker, the DS/90 was made in May 1995; but there's
no telling when it was actually designed, so there's no easy way to
estimate what they might have designed it to take.  For testing, I'll
probably get a couple of 8 or 16Mb SIMMs; but I'd like to know what
the actual maximum is before I start populating it for use.



Thanks again,
-Pat