[rescue] sun 3/60 update

[Dan Moisa]

Will trade boards for schematics and source code :)

But yeah anyone is welcome to one of those for the cost of parts, we'll
figure something out. Putting the BOM together is a PITA because about 40%
of the components are not on Digikey/Mouser so it's not one-click uploading
a spreadsheet, you have to chase down sellers. It will get easier in a
subsequent version if I sub out some of the rarer stuff.

Ethernet is indeed there, Mouse is right you just need a period-appropriate
centercom or equivalent AUI-to-10baseT transceiver. You can't pay me to
implement the coax section and the crazy analog switches or dozen of R/C
components all with values that haven't been made for years that it needs.

Mouse, keyboard and SCSI (with 50-pin connector so you can easily connect
an emulator) are likely not going to be a problem. The board size will
increase by about 20% with SCSI alone. A lot of effort was put into DMA
between network/SCSI/RAM, mediated by the 0-wait-state MMU, with different
data sizes (8/16/32 bits). That is what made those computers really good
workstations.

Video will be a weird one, I'd really like to get the schematics for the
P4-based color CG6. Otherwise I'll implement the onboard BW framebuffer and
modernize it to work on VGA instead of ECL, but it's like putting astroturf
in the mansion :( At that point there's a question of whether this stays as
a single-board-computer. If the P4 CG6 (which of course is different from
the 3/80 version) was less of unobtanium, I'd just implement the P4 bus and
be home free.

On Wed, May 21, 2025 at 9:17 PM Mouse via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:

> > I=E2=80=99d love to see the ethernet, video, keyboard and mouse back,
> > so that it can be a fully functional workstation [...].  That would
> > make the very low availability of the sun3 machines somewhat less of
> > a problem for someone who wants to get started.
>
> It would at that!
>
> > And I=E2=80=99d second the suggestion to skip 30 pin SIMMs and use 72
> > pin SIMMs instead.  They are much easier to get in larger sizes.
> > And, I=E2=80=99d bet that 72 pin SIMM sockets are easier to get, as
> > well.
>
> But don't forget that this was built to not the functionality but the
> *schematics* of the original -3/60.  Switching from 30-pin to 72-pin
> SIMMs would entail a redesign - a rather partial redesign probably but
> still a redesign.  I don't know enough about memory buses to know how
> big a redesign it would be....
>
> I too would like to see video, keyboard, and mouse.  (The Ethernet is
> already there, provided you don't insist on thinnet - it was
> specifically *co-ax* Ethernet which was called out as omitted, and the
> picture shows an AUI-to-10baseT microtransceiver, so it presumably has,
> like the original, AUI Ethernet.)  But I'm not doing the work, so what
> I'd like to see is at most a peanut-gallery comment.
>
> I'd also like to see the 24M cap on RAM lifted.  But I don't know how
> feasible that would be, and, while NetBSD either understands or can be
> made to understand a >24M -3/60, SunOS might not get along with it.
> (Are there any other OSes that run on the -3/60?)
>
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