I purchased an interesting system at the Timonium Hamfest last weekend. It's a
SparcStation IPX, refitted to a military case. I've put some pictures up at
<
http://www.applefritter.com/temp/saic/>. It consists of the computer itself
and an expansion chassis that latches onto the bottom of the case.
Right now, I don't have the machine running. The power supply I got with it is
a LAMBDA, 24VDC, 10.5 A. I don't have a military connector, so I've been
sticking the wires onto the pins. I managed to get the system to power on.
It gives a splash screen reading "Tech-Source Inc." followed by a line I didn't
think to write down before it started having problems.
At the next spring it tells me a bit about itself:
SparcStation IPX, Keyboard Present
ROM Rev. 2.9, 64 MB memory installed, Serial #2219226
Ethernet address 8:0:20:1a:c:28, Host ID: 5721dcda
And informs be that it can't boot off the hard drive (the seller told me its
been wiped clean).
Just a few minutes ago the power supply apparently gave out. I had the machine
powered on and was copying down the above information when it seemingly powered
off and the screen started flickering on and off. I'm not at all familiar with
Sparcs, and I really don't know much about power supplies either. Does this
strike the anybody as a faulty power supply connection, or something else?
The expansion chassis needs its own power, so unless the power supply I have is
powerful enough to power both (opinions?) I'm going to need a second. I need to
get the expansion chassis up and running as it has the CD-ROM drive (along with
a second hard drive and a tape drive) in it which I need to install the
operating system.
Does anybody have any suggestions regarding getting this system running? Know
where I can find some decent power supplies that will work? Ideally with the
three-prong military connectors?
Thanks for the info.
Tom Owad
Received on Mon Aug 07 2000 - 15:46:18 BST