Cadnetix help needed

From: Aaron Christopher Finney <aaron_at_wfi-inc.com>
Date: Sun Apr 5 17:58:36 1998

Hi all,

I picked up the "Sun" workstation that appeared for free here a couple of
weeks back and was pleasantly surprised at the haul, and a little
perplexed. What I got:

Cadnetix box with big colour monitor
Cipher C880 tape unit (Big sucker)
CItoh 1550B DM printer
A 286 workstation
Optical mice/pads and keyboards
All the thick-ethernet cabling and hardware for the PC nodes
About 30 10" tapes containing schematics for their legacy products
About 30 8" diskettes (Dysan!) with really neat 2-pack 3-ring holders
About 100 5 1/4" diskettes with SCO stuff on them

Since it was supposedly working when pulled, I plugged everything in and
just fired it up (Well, I looked into the top of the case first to make
sure there wasn't any sign of rust or water damage). So far, nothing. I
finally figured out how to get the case apart (very tricky little latch
that has to be pulled from the *inside*) and have examined it in more
detail. I believe it's a 68020 machine, and the manual says it runs a
"Cadnetix-modified" version of Berkley Unix 4.2. There are two large HD's
which are extremely inaccessable, but I may have to pull them to look
since they make a lot of noise. There is a 6-slot vertical backplane with
4 cards; what I believe is the memory board, the 68020 board, one marked
"Graphic Ram J177 Rev C", and one that is attached to the last with ribbon
cables. The keyboard plugs into the back of the display and the mouse into
the keyboard. Oh yeah, and there are three 5" fans screaming away in
there.

BTW, it's been powered on for 20 minutes or so with no display. My Sun
3/50 with 12 megs of ram only takes 5. The display is just black, although
on power on/off I can see signs of life (red/blue/white lines for an
instant).

Anyone have any technical info on this monster? I have the system users
guide, but no technical data on it whatsoever.


Thanks,

Aaron

PS - I think my wife was thinking divorce when I kept carrying boxes into
the house; I don't want to eat my pride and find that I can't get this
working....
Received on Sun Apr 05 1998 - 17:58:36 BST