Re: Hacking a SunPCi card - anyone tried this?
- From: "Ken Taylor" <ken123@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:26:59 +1300
"Chris Jones" <lugnut808@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:11nq77h99s39rab@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Hi all,
>
> I have access to, and the opportunity to play with, (though not at present
> ownership of) a large number of no-longer-required SunPCI cards. The
> model
> is Penguin, Bios V1.1.2 441B. These are basically an AMD x86 PC on a PCI
> card which plugs into the bus of a SPARC based sun workstation, to allow
> Sun users to run M$ windows / PC programs without getting a separate box,
> power supply, hard drive, network connection etc. The card has a 400MHz
> AMD cpu, 2 DIMM banks, its own graphics chipset (SiS 5598), W48C67 clock
> generation, ESS1869F audio chip, Winbond W83877TF peripherals, it has
> USB1.1 I think, some slightly modified Award bios, a PIC16C64A programmed
> by Sun, AFAIK to emulate a keyboard and mouse (to get the input from the
> Sun keyboard and mouse and to provide this to the PC by emulating the
> hardware. The sticker on the PIC says MSKB 18 (c)1998), and it has an
> intel
> 21554 PCI bus bridge, to allow the Sun to access the PC memory I think,
> (or
> vice versa?) which allows the PC to render its screen inside a window on
> the sun desktop, although there is the option to use the internal graphics
> hardware on the SunPCI card and the VGA connector on the card edge. The
> card seems to also have an IDE interface though the connector has not been
> soldered on since the normal usage is to access the a file on the Sun hard
> drive via some software on the Sun CPU over the PCI bus bridge somehow.
>
> Anyhow, what I would like to be able to do is to make the card boot
> without
> the Sun workstation attached. It would be a nice little linux PC with
> only
> 25W maximum power consumption, and has USB so keyboard and mouse, network
> and possibly even hard drive etc. could be attached, and could be used as
> a
> VOIP box or for web browsing or whatever.
>
> Just applying power doesn't seem to do it - I tried plugging it into the
> PCI
> bus of an old PC and the fan worked but nothing else. I think either: the
> PIC microcontroller or the Intel bus bridge IC might be holding the SunPCi
> in reset, or the modified bios on the SunPCi card might be unwilling to
> boot without some words of encouragement from a genuine Sun workstation,
> or
> something I haven't thought of.
>
> If I plug it into the Sun machine and run the software on the SPARC cpu
> that
> tells the SunPCI to boot, then from what I remember, the internal video
> port of the SunPCI does become active and shows some text whilst the bios
> boots properly and then when Win98 runs off the emulated hard drive, the
> video is switched over to the window on the Sun desktop, so if it were
> possible to boot the SunPCi without the Sun then I ought to see something
> on the video port.
>
> I considered trying to find out about an open-source bios which could
> replace the one on the board but it looks to me like these open BIOSs are
> only available for specific motherboards.
>
> These cards are sitting in a pile at work and are causing me great anguish
> because I can see that they are basically complete low power PCs and they
> will sit there forever gathering dust unless I figure out how to persuade
> them to boot. Has anyone else played with one of these? (or ideally I'd
> love it if one of the designers were lurking here and could give me a
> quiet
> hint...)
>
> Chris
>
Take a look here:
http://www.vdberg.org/~richard/Linux-on-SunPCi-mini-Howto/preface.html#OVERVIEW
as this due has set one up with Linux. The approach may give clues about how
to make it do MS stuff if that's your thing.
Cheers.
Ken
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Hacking a SunPCi card - anyone tried this?
- From: Chris Jones
- Re: Hacking a SunPCi card - anyone tried this?
- References:
- Hacking a SunPCi card - anyone tried this?
- From: Chris Jones
- Hacking a SunPCi card - anyone tried this?
- Prev by Date: Re: OT : Idiot America !
- Next by Date: Re: Excellent Landing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"!
- Previous by thread: Hacking a SunPCi card - anyone tried this?
- Next by thread: Re: Hacking a SunPCi card - anyone tried this?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
