[rescue] sun 3/60 update

[Ian Litchfield]

I would love one to mess around with! I love seeing hobby projects like
this to respark interest in the community!!

Fantastic work!!

Correct me if I am wrong, and forgive me of my ignorance if it’s easier
said than done, but couldn’t you implement the expansion bus it’s VME? It
should be well documented.
Then we’d have access to a library of boards giving us frame buffers,
ethernet, and disk options.

-Ian L.

On Thu, May 22, 2025 at 02:28 Dan Moisa via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org>
wrote:

> 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?)
>>
>> /~\ The ASCII                             Mouse
>> \ / Ribbon Campaign
>>  X  Against HTML                mouse at rodents-montreal.org
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>>
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