So here we are, Retrochallenge 2014.

Did anybody else pick Sun Microsystems equipment?

Well, I'll be working with the Sun 3/50 series of machines: these are low end diskless workstations from the late 1980s (mine is marked 1988, but it seems that Debbie [Damon and Debbie] was doing some animations on one of these at York University in 1987, so it must be from that year, so I might have a slightly later revision).

Main specs are a Motorola 68020 CPU, 68881 FPU, a custom Sun MMU, 4MB of ram soldered directly to the board (no sockets, no SIMMS), AMD Lance [10Mbit] ethernet, 2x serial ports, keyboard, and optical mouse.

So after day 0, the base hardware is restored/tested/burnt in, and additional activities can proceed (still need to sort/notate/upload the pics from yesterday). The system board, and power supply board have been cleaned with an air compressor, alcohol and cotton swabs; the plastic exterior of the case has been windex'ed/scrubbed, and then retr0brite'ed for 3 hours in the outside daylight (to say sun might confuse the reader), the power supply fan has been cleaned/oiled, and I brought out the TeleVideo 9065 serial terminal for testing (which is still dirty and yellow, but was enough to let me confirm that the Sun3 hardware is working correctly after restoration).

Next up: I want to see my bwtwo framebuffer. Of course, I don't have the original monitor, so hopefully I can get something going on a VGA CRT. The resolution is 1152x900 at 61.8KHz horizontal, 66Hz vertical, output on a DE-9 connector. Using ECL levels, it is supposed to be 0.8V peak-to-peak for the video signal, whereas VGA uses 0.7V peak-to-peak on each of the red, green, and blue signal lines. Surely there is something that can be done in order to see it...

I do have the original keyboard and mouse, and an appropriate optical mouse pad, which I'll try to find (in a box somewhere around here no doubt), but the Sun 4 keyboards and mice are supposed to be using compatible signals, except they use a different plug, so surely by the time I get a video signal going I'll have found something to use there. I do have some Sun 4 mice which are mechanical, so if I don't find the optical mouse pad, I'll use one of those instead.