*earlier* what i have here is a Sun SPARCstation 1+.

it's going to need a little work but WHAT is that blob of duct tape

looks like a coin cell mod.

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.

i've also got some Sun mice. an M3 and an M4.

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.

ahh well, i'll just file some grooves.

adapter!

couldn't find a Sun 13W3 cable adapter so I'm doing this to get to VGA.

well it found the keyboard!

four months later  i made the Video Snake Oil board that can adapt 13W3 (any type!) to VGA. you just wire up the little pads to whatever your machine needs.

i've also installed a ZuluSCSI. this neat little board is a lot cheaper than a SCSI2SD. i'm going to try and install Solaris using a CDROM ISO file. CD6_512.iso is placed on the SD card. it'll be ID 6, 512 bytes per sector.

well, it tries to boot from the CDROM but suffers a BAD TRAP. not sure why, maybe i need to update the IDPROM contents.

yeah i am guessing the machine type in the IDPROM is invalid so the installer runs the wrong code.

wrote a little FORTH program to update the contents of the IDPROM, and it looks like it has a valid host id now.

@tubetime ahh!! Boosted because of #Forth! Haven’t thought about it for a long time. Used to use it a bunch a long time ago. Once had a function named “exist”, later wrote a loop: “do i exist” … Simple pleasures.

@tubetime once wrote a simple Forth-like language I called “go” written in 68000 assembler that interactively compiled lines directly to 68000 machine code. Ran on an original Mac 128k ;-)

@stepheneb @tubetime yeah forth is so easy to bootstrap. I think I had a small forth-ish for 6502 based on reading about it in Byte. I was so happy when Apple and Sun bundled forth as boot loaders. Also tube time should do a Sun 4/260. That was my first Unix machine, got surplus and loaded it down with internet software in mid 90s. The lights flickered when it powered on.