Gregory's Serverwelp, how'd i get into THIS situation? let's rewind...
 204 comments
on the back, we have the usual semi-cursed 13W3 video connector and the Sun keyboard connector. where am i going to find a Sun keyboard? i just happen to have one, new in box! i bought this years ago at Weird Stuff Warehouse when they were still around. i have no idea why, but i'm glad i did. however, they have RJ11 connectors and the keyboard (which is where the mouse plugs in) just has a mini-DIN connector. uh oh. which brings me back to here. does this mouse, despite the connector difference, use the same protocol? looks like it is essentially the same protocol as the version of the mouse (type 4?) designed for the SPARCstation. the output is open collector, inverted async serial, 5 byte. time to build an adapter. the connector is RJ11 (technically 6P4C) but it has these pins sticking out, presumably so you can't plug it into a phone jack.  @tubetime What you need is a Belkin F1DE083UK - adapts to a PS/2 keyboard fine, also cheap, but I had no luck with the 13W3 to VGA connector - needed a separate adapter for that. There's also the Raritan APSSUN which may work better but was too expensive to ship to the UK, but not a problem for you?  @thejpster yes but these old workstations require 512 byte sectors for their cdroms in order to boot  @tubetime This inspires me - I have a VAXStation that uses a 3W3 video output (basically 13W3 without the digital pins) and it's impossible to find cables for it, but there are connectors for it around Do you do any termination or anything active on the board? I've made an RGB port adapter before and got pretty bad ringing, but it could definitely just be the monitor I used since I had no other way of testing. @nkizz no termination, that is done in the VGA monitor (75 ohm)  @tubetime oh THAT might explain the ghosting in the screenshot i saw first 😱 @tubetime I haven't seen a 13W3 cable in a long time! That is quite a project!  @tubetime You only need the RGB if your display does sync-on-green. This is why I have a bunch of NEC LCD1990SX, they do sync-on-green and support a 1:1 aspect ratio in addition to stretching to fill the screen. @tubetime A friend @delan has a RPi Pico project to convert a USB KB and Mouse to the serial the SPARCstations use: https://github.com/delan/usb3sun   @tubetime @tubetime You might try asking on the sunhelp rescue list (http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org) @tubetime I remember getting my first #sparcstation at #Adobe. Those were heady years in the risc workstation era. The sparcstation, the IBM rs6000, the SGI crimson, and the dec alpha station were all exciting introductions. It’s nice to see one coming back into service.  The mouse lays with its back off, its belly baking under the hot desk lamp, beating its pulse generator trying to turn itself on, but it can't. Not without your help.... |
*earlier* what i have here is a Sun SPARCstation 1+.