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I recently fired up my old Sun 3/80 to see if it would still boot. It wouldn't. The battery backed config RAM was dead. Of course I couldn't quit, could I?

I recently fired up my old Sun 3/80 to see if it would still boot. It wouldn't. The battery backed config RAM was dead. Of course I couldn't quit, could I? I was able to find a modern replacement for the chip, order it from Mouser, get it programmed correctly (after a few tries) and hey look, it started to boot. Then, unsurprisingly, the old Quantum SCSI disk was only happy enough to make grinding noises and no more. I found a guy making SATA to SCSI adapters meant for these old Suns and paired that to an SSD I had lying around. Hey, look, that now works too. Finally, by setting up tftp, bootp, and NFS on a FreeBSD VM I was able to net boot the machine and install SunOS 4. My goodness, I had forgotten how slow the thing is, and how much has changed since the 1990s. I was able to get a bunch of more modern stuff to compile, but it was a fight every time. Next I was going to drag out the old SGI Indigo, but haven't found the energy yet.

icedchai 4y ago
I ran into the same problem with a newer Sun model (Ultra 10.) I looked up the chip on ebay and almost ordered one, but wasn't in the mood for another project I'm going to lose interest in after a week. The drive was also incredibly loud on startup, so I'm concerned it may also be dead. (The last time I booted it was probably 2005, running Solaris 8!)
neilv 4y ago
Cool. A 3/80 with SunView and period SunView tools would be great. I'd be curious if you find a trove of the random open source SunView software from that era. A later SunSite mirror still up is at http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/cgi-bin/ftp.new/ftpshow/pub/ http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/cgi-bin/ftp.new/ftp... Starting from a Usenet archive, to find the names and original FTP sites of software might help. (Especially programs circa 1990 with names ending in "Tool". There was even a ToolTool.) There's also commercial software. FrameMaker and Interleaf at the time were arguably nicer than 2022 Microsoft Word, for example.
neilv 4y ago
If that drive was a Quantum 105, it might've had a stiction problem even when it was new. :) https://www.sunmanagers.org/1992/0383.html https://www.sunmanagers.org/1992/0383.html There were various remedies, including slapping the drive, and dropping it flat onto a desk a very short distance.

icedchai 4y ago

I ran into the same problem with a newer Sun model (Ultra 10.) I looked up the chip on ebay and almost ordered one, but wasn't in the mood for another project I'm going to lose interest in after a week. The drive was also incredibly loud on startup, so I'm concerned it may also be dead. (The last time I booted it was probably 2005, running Solaris 8!)

neilv 4y ago

Cool. A 3/80 with SunView and period SunView tools would be great. I'd be curious if you find a trove of the random open source SunView software from that era. A later SunSite mirror still up is at http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/cgi-bin/ftp.new/ftpshow/pub/ http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/cgi-bin/ftp.new/ftp... Starting from a Usenet archive, to find the names and original FTP sites of software might help. (Especially programs circa 1990 with names ending in "Tool". There was even a ToolTool.) There's also commercial software. FrameMaker and Interleaf at the time were arguably nicer than 2022 Microsoft Word, for example.

neilv 4y ago

If that drive was a Quantum 105, it might've had a stiction problem even when it was new. :) https://www.sunmanagers.org/1992/0383.html https://www.sunmanagers.org/1992/0383.html There were various remedies, including slapping the drive, and dropping it flat onto a desk a very short distance.