Rescuing from the scrapyard

Anything to do with New Zealand Classic or Vintage Computing not covered in the other forums

Rescuing from the scrapyard

Postby glc on Wed Apr 01, 2015 12:57 pm

My employer was closing up the business.

There was a sun Ultra 1 that had been used for a test fixture that I had had my eyes on for a long time.
It also had not been used for a long time
One day my boss told me it had gone , to the scrap yard that morning.
I found out where it was and I got there within an hour and it was there , and they gave it to me for nothing

A photo of it here.
http://s1379.photobucket.com/user/glc/m ... y.jpg.html
the suns (sparc processor) don't run windows but are typically supported by debian, gentoo or *BSD, oh.. yeah, solaris 8 or 9 too

when I got it home and powered it up , it just gave a short 'chirp', not the welcoming sun 'beep'
I quickly found a rather black tantalum capacitor and removed it.
It powered up , no problems at all then
Fortunatly i have another Ultra 1 from whichI was able to get the correct value from and replace it.
However this one is a little better with creator 3d graphics card


A little later I indicated my interest in some other old stuff if it was available.
Alas, it was going to scrap , unless I wanted it
These were used in a manufacturing process to control insertion machine

I now have 3 x Aval AVC-999
I only got to test them this morning, here are the results


http://s1379.photobucket.com/user/glc/m ... sort=3&o=2

one is incomplete and for spare parts

One works (runs CP/M)
http://s1379.photobucket.com/user/glc/m ... sort=3&o=3

and the other looks complete but not booting

here's a picture of the motherboard which is hinged from the underside of the unit
It runs a Z80A
http://s1379.photobucket.com/user/glc/m ... sort=3&o=1

I can find very little info about these machines on google except a spanish collector who has one
http://translate.google.co.nz/translate ... rev=search

anyone else got any info ?

well , since my employer has closed the business I have lots of time to fix the one that doesn't go........amongst all the other stuff to repair...... :-)

maybe I should be looking for another job....


cheers

Grant
glc
 
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Joined: Tue Nov 25, 2014 5:00 am

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