Lmst

@nina_kali_nina if you like that, you'll love the fact that if you shut down windows 98 on the #sunpci the physical VGA card will say that text, even if you use it in windowed mode!

Despite my #sunpci project being on hold due to two dead #sun ultra 10s (RIP). A SunPCi II arrived today!

I really love how it came with a disposable anti-static wrist band. That's such a great idea to prevent accidents, especially for this era of electronic equipment!

When I get a SPARC machine with PCI this will be the next RE target. I think these "chimera" models are quite similar to the "penguin" models, technically, but only one way to find out!

#retrocomputing #unix #solaris

A picture of a SunPCi in its original packaging.

A picture of a disposable anti static wrist strap

Given that my #sun ultra 10's are definitely dead until I get a bunch of replacement parts (hopefully just caps) I probably won't be able to finish the #sunpci video for #doscember (It'll still happen, just... not in December 😢)

I have a mostly written script and research for "OS/2 a better DOS than DOS?" in which I run Descent, better (amongst other things)

Does this sound at all interesting to the #retrocomputing nerds that follow me?

Trying to pivot! Pivoting is hard! 🫣

Some absolutely wonderful human is sending me a #sun blade 2500 for cost of shipping because they felt bad for my ultra 10s being broken and wanting the machine to be actually used again.

The #sunpci reverse engineering effort is about to be a lot easier!

Sometimes the #retrocomputing community really is a wonderful place. ♥️

Well, my #sun machine was resurrected it seems! I'm cautiously optimistic.

As a special treat here's a video showing off the #sunpci in #VGA mode. This is a capture of both the Solaris and DOS side at the same time. You can see how mouse movement on the Solaris side gets translated to the DOS side!

#retrocomputing #unix

The general consensus appears to be that the problem is almost certainly dead NVRAM batteries. Apparently having bad/unstable NVRAMs can lead to all sorts of weird and wonderful issues.

I ordered some new ones, so lets hope that that can fix it so I can still finish my #SunPCi mini documentary. (And create Linux drivers for them)

#retrocomputing

Well my OTHER #sun ultra 10 just died. I now have two machines that will power on, but the power LED stays off, and no display ever comes.

Before that started to happen it complained about the IDPROM contents being wrong, so I followed a guide to re-create the contents and allow my ultra 10 to boot. The "power led won't come on" problem started then.

Does anyone know how to get this unstuck? I need at least one to work for my #sunpci #DOScember video!

#retrocomputing #unix #solaris

It's not all doom and gloom with the #sunpci app! Some of it is quake!

#retrocomputing

Perfect, absolutely no notes. Ready to ship this #sunpci client.

#retrocomputing

I can now also play back traces that I make from the #sunpci application! So now I don't need to have my ultra 10 powered on to even work on the client.

#retrocomputing

Some more progress on the #sunpci client! We now have text mode rendering on par with the original (which also doesn't properly seem to handle 9dot mode)

#retrocomputing

A sceenshot of two windows showing a BIOS screen. One is called "SunPCi" the other is called "SDL_app". They both seem to show a correct screen for both.

SDL1 is fiiiiiiiine

#retrocomputing #sunpci

A picture of a Solaris 8 CDE desktop showing a window called "SDL_App" it is showing a BIOS boot screen in that window. There's a terminal window behind it showing that the program is called "./sdltest_solaris"

After some more noodling with the #solaris kernel driver, behold the (as far as I am aware) only third-party #sunpci client program. (This still uses the Solaris kernel driver)

My program currently "emulates" the VGA text mode using #ncurses (poorly) but this makes development a lot faster!

Next up is the block device emulation, then I should be able to boot DOS on this entirely! (without graphics, obviously... But sixels... maybe? 😅 )

#retrocomputing #unix #showingoffalittlebitsorry

If I had a dollar for each time I had to map #SDL scancodes to a random keyboard this year I'd have 3 dollars.

That's not a lot, but it's weird I have to do this every 4 months it seems.

There is something terribly wrong with me.

#retrocomputing #sunpci

A screenshot of mappings between SDL scancodes and random numbers.

Also note in the above screenshot that the "Award Modular BIOS" screen does not have the normal logo. But there's still SPACE for a logo.

The fact that the #sunpci did not show the Award logo bothered me from the start.

The reason for this is obvious now. The "Fake text mode" that the SunPCi application implements simply doesn't have support for the weird mixed text/graphics mode that the BIOS wants to use!

#retrocomputing

I spend a bit of time dissecting the #sunpci driver in #ghidra. And I can now boot the SunPCi from my own code! Using the #solaris driver still.

Some terrifying conclusions:

The windowed output in the SunPCi userspace application comes from repeatedly read()ing the /dev/sunpcidrv0 node. That just returns some raw video data and mode information.

Userspace contains a VGA emulator itself. Whenever it doesn't understand something it just switches to the external VGA.

#retrocomputing

A picture of the SunPCi window booting with lots of debug messages behind it.

I'm putting together something fun about the #sunpci for #DOScember

What would you all like to know about it most! I'm testing compatibility with various DOSses, and games, of course! Any games/apps you want to see in particular?

Anything you're dying to learn about the hardware?

I can't promise I'll add every idea, but I'll try my best!

#retrocomputing #retrogaming #solaris