Re: Advice about SPARCStation IPX

dnichols@xxxxxxxxxxx (DoN. Nichols) writes:
>> I am retrocomputers lover, and I recently got a Sun IPX.
>> I don't know very much about Sun's hardware.
>> The problem is that the machine doesn't boot and it even doesn not
>> print anything at all: monitor is blank.
>> Moreover monitor's led initially becomes green then it starts
>> blinking... as if just no signal reaches the monitor.
>> I thought that video board is not working. Am i right or wrong?

EKP <palazzinaro@xxxxxxxxx> replied:
> You don't mention lights blinking on the keyboard, so I'm going
> to presume that you don't have a Sun keyboard connected to it. In that
> case, the behavior you have observed is normal. It initializes the
> monitor (when the LED turns green), and then shuts it back down when it
> discovers that there is no keyboard, and shifts all input and output to
> the TTYA serial port. (IIRC, on that box, the two serial ports share a
> single DB-25 connector, with TTYA being on the normal pins, and a
> special connector needed to access TTYB.

I believe it was the "pizza boxes" (Sparcstations 1 and 2) that had the
DB-25 connectors that needed a splitter cable if you wanted to use both.
The IPX has separate DIN-8 plugs for TTYA and TTYB, so you needed either a
"hardware flow control capable" Apple Mac cable or a Sun cable to convert
to a DB-25 connector.

I agree that if you don't have a Sun keyboard, monitor, and 13W3 cable,
unplugging the Sun keyboard and using TTYA is probably your best bet for
getting started. Try 9600 bps, even parity, and 1 stop bit first.

> And -- the monitor which you use (once you add a Sun keyboard)
> needs to be able to display 1152x900 resolution, as that is the default
> of the video card.

Usually, but not exactly. The on-board cg6 (GX) expected there to be a
Sun 13W3 cable connecting it to the monitor. That cable has three "sense
bits" which the monitor was expected to use to indicate its capabilities to
the GX/cg6 framebuffer. Resolution is determined at boot up / reset time
from the sense pins. EEPROM/setenv overrides are ignored.
--------------------------------------------------
13W3 cable pinout (signal type: analog)
Pin A1 - Red / Red Ground
Pin A2 - Green / Green Ground
Pin A3 - Blue / Blue Ground
Pin 1 - N/C
Pin 2 - N/C
Pin 3 - Sense 2
Pin 4 - Sense Return
Pin 5 - Composite Sync
Pin 6 - N/C
Pin 7 - N/C
Pin 8 - Sense 1
Pin 9 - Sense 0
Pin 10 - Composite Sync Return

Monitor Sense Bits Defined:
Value S2 S1 S0
0 GND GND GND 1024x768 77hz
1 GND GND 1600x1280 76hz
2 GND GND 1280x1024 76hz
3 GND 1152x900 66hz
4 GND GND 1152x900 76hz 19"
5 GND 1024x768 60hz
6 GND 1152x900 76hz 16-17"
7 1152x900 66hz
where GND is pin 4.
--------------------------------------------------
If you use a 13W3 to DB9 adapter, I think you get case "7" (since none of
the sense lines will be grounded).

>> I mean... if another video board is pluggable to the expansion's
>> slots... or... i don't know...

> Yes -- you can install an alternative framebuffer

Agreed. The IPX is designed so that any frame buffer you've added as an
SBUS card will be "found" as the system default before the on-board frame
buffer. Some of these other frame buffers also obey EEPROM settings.
For example, the TGX+ frame buffer can do up to:

setenv output-device screen:r1280x1024x76

See http://www.obsolyte.com/sunFAQ/faq_framebuffer/framebuffer.html
for more.
-WBE
.

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