[rescue] SS10SX Value

[Joshua D. Boyd]

> On Jun 16, 2026, at 2:53 PM, Mouse via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
> 
>> Yes, it is an SS10 with a 4 MB VSIMM.  They are rare, so [...]
> 
> Not only rare; 4MB VSIMMs are useful.  Some people - me, if I weren't
> in a "shedding hardware" phase - would buy it for that alone.
> 
> I'm actually somewhat surprised nobody has produced an aftermarket
> VSIMM by now; I would think recent tech would make it easy, but perhaps
> there are issues I know nothing about.

I’m a little surprised that no-one has done an aftermarket VSIMM, but I assume it has something to do with possible Sun proprietary silicon on the VSIMM.

Looking at photos, I think I see 32x 256K x 8 60ns VRAM chips, but that still leaves another couple significant looking chips.  Particularly worrisome looking is the large square chip.  A few likely uses for chips on their would be a buffer/transciever type think. Maybe a logic component or 2.  Maybe some non-volitile storage to identify what it is.  I can’t really find high quality photos or scans of any VSIMMs though.

Given that VSIMMS aren’t normal dimms and normally VRAM implies dual porting, I might venture to guess that the large chip has something to do with reading out the frame buffer to send to the output.  Having good photos of the optional AVB card (part numbers 501-2479 or 501-2575 Google suggests) for allowing the use of a second VSIMM might also help shed light on things.

I probably wouldn’t be able to turn out a VSIMM clone even if I had them (lack of money and by extension time, but maybe also could turn out to be lack of skill), but if anyone wanted to product clear, high resolution pictures or scans of various VSIMMs and AVBs, I’d love to see them.