[rescue] Sun 3/80 Schematics

[Chris Hanson]

o;?Thatbs actually why I suggested the VME stuff: Itbs about the same
level of complexity, and cost, but modular and fairly hackable.

For example you can get a CPU card with RAM, serial, parallel, SCSI, Ethernet,
and flash for around US$100, throw it on a small backplane, attach a
transition board to expose the I/O, and go.

Or you can find a CPU card with less I/O that doesnbt need a transition
board, and use separate inexpensive SCSI & Ethernet cards. Itbs basically
the same as one of the non-all-in-one Sun-3 systems, you can tailor it to your
liking.

As an example, I just ordered a random cheap graphics/keyboard/mouse card to
use with my 68040 and 88110 CPU cards. Since itbs VME there were programming
docs written (and Ibve been able to find them), so I expect to not have much
difficulty bringing it up with wscons on NetBSD and OpenBSD.

(And speaking of tractable software, Ibve found the BSDs quite easy to hack
around in.)

 b Chris

Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 15, 2019, at 8:04 PM, Bill Dorsey <dorsey at lila.com> wrote:
>
> o;?Hi Chris,
>
> My bad for not being clear about my goals.B  The 3/80 is a horrible data
> acquisition system compared to anything modern, and probably even to older
> systems for which turnkey data acquisition systems existed at the time --
> assuming you could find any of that stuff.B  I like tinkering with old
> hardware and old software to see what I can make it do.B  Hacking the 3/80
to
> run at 25 MHz was arguably pointless for the 25% performance gain given
that
> modern computers are 10,000 times faster anyway.B  What I get from the 3/80
> that I don't get from anything modern is the ability to understand most or
all
> of what is happening both electrically and with the software.B  To me this
> makes it much more rewarding to work on.B  I can modify the operating
system
> to work with the hardware modifications I make at the component level.B  I
> would never be able to do this on anything modern.B  The Linux kernel has
over
> 12 million lines of code in it.B  Compare that to ~400,000 for SunOS 4.1.B
A
> similar or greater ratio of complexity exists on the hardware side as well.B
> Given the number of hours in a day, I need to either specialize and give up
> the big picture, or stick to simpler hardware.B  I've given up the big
picture
> for my day job, but the hell if I'm going to do that for fun.B  ;)
>
> - Bill
>
>>> On 10/15/19 10:19 PM, Chris Hanson wrote:
>> If you want to do data acquisition and process control, Ibm not sure what
>> modding a 3/80 would get you.
>> Why not put together a VME system with something like an MVME147 or
MVME167
>> <http://m88k.com/mvme167.html <http://m88k.com/mvme167.html>>? You can get
> a
>> small VME backplane, enclosure, and PSU pretty inexpensively, as well as
> the
>> cards, and it should work great for that purpose.
>> Of course you could even get real Sun VME gear such as a 3/e to do this.
:)
>>  -- Chris
>> _______________________________________________
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