@maehem@mastodon.social
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maehem

@maehem@mastodon.social

Loafer (as defined by Bill O’Reilly). Digital Alchemist. Cyber Artist. Technologist. Containment Specialist at -redacted-. Sun Microsystems Labs Alumni. Former SFX specialist at Blue Man Group. Mostly retired now but I have a long list of Java/JavaFX, Analog Synth, PCB design and random hobby things I want to create. Available for remote work in rapid prototyping in 2024.

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maehem, to random
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A gentleman named Paul Khoury approached me about getting a retro computer he'd acquired up and running. The computer is a Sun SPARCstation UPN (1997), a prototype for a super small desktop computer that preceded the Mac mini by about 6-7 years. Only about 20 were ever made. I was the designer on the project and had poured my soul into it, so I was proud to help him get it running. I dug out the schematics from storage and gave any advice I could remember and he got it powered on in a few days.

Front view of the Sun Microsystems UPN, super small desktop system. This is a prototype and no more than about 20-30 were ever made. Measured approximately 9 inches long, 7 inches high and about 4 inches wide. Had two SBus slots and a AFX graphics card slot. Two serial ports, Sun Keyboard/Mouse connector, 16-bit audio and external SCSI. On the top were slots for up to two PCMCIA cards, which brought in nascent WiFi capability. There was an internal SCA type hard drive of approximately 200GB. Processor was the Fujitsu turboSPARC-170MHz. Memory was two standard 32MB DRAM cards. Ran Solaris 5.9 operating system.

maehem,
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Some more details about SPARCstation UPN.

A Sun SPARCstation UPN opened to reveal the main board and inserted SBus cards along with the disk drive mounted to one half of the chassis metal. The 16-bit audio card can be seen at the bottom. Above that are memory DIMMs and above that is the DC-DC converter that converted the 24V input to 12V, 5V and 3.3V used by the fan and chips.
Description sheet for the SPARCstation UPN main board. We intended to also sell the main board as an embedded solution.
A close up view of the inside of the SPARCstation UPN with SBus cards removed. The dual PCMCIA socket can be seen with a layer covering of Kapton film.

arstechnica, to random
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Never-before-seen data wiper may have been used by Russia against Ukraine

AcidRain, discovered in 2022, is tied to AcidPour. Both are attributed to Russia.

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/03/never-before-seen-data-wiper-may-have-been-used-by-russia-against-ukraine/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

maehem,
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@arstechnica the nerdier parts of Neuromancer are sounding more prophetic by the day.

maehem, to Electronics
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What arcane magic have I gotten into? synth-in-a-dodecahedron almost complete! Hoping to fire this up shortly.

Another view looking inside the dodecahedron synth, made up of PCBs.
The outside view of the dodecahedron synth showing the zodiac themed circuit boards with some electronic controls poking through.

maehem, to random
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On a roll today! Next up is assembly of my Mnemosyne project. An NES cartridge and a custom programmer. The cartridge is based on things I’ve found online, but the programmer is my take on how I’d push the bytes into it using an Atmega328 and some custom Arduino code. I was given the files for a custom game my friend wrote and my partner did some art work for, but she never got a cart, so here we are, doing it the hard way. Follow along on GitHub : CircuitMonkey/mnemosyne.

Close up of the NES cartridge PCB. Left is a Atmega13 chip. Middle and right are modern flash memories. Rewritable and vastly more capacity than the original NES was cable of.

maehem, to random
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Cyberspace-1 Retro PC system. Complete with fake cyberpunk company names. Backplane and Clock board. Once I get these two working, I'll finish design for the 6502 card, memory card and Video/IO cards.

Cyberspace-1 backplane. A retro system for 6502. Fake cyberpunk branding shown in lower left as made by "Ono Sendai" (an homage to William Gibson's book "Neuromancer").
Front of the Sozu clock PCB, for use in the Cyberspace-1 system.
Back of the Sozu PCB with delicious traces running left to right and showing a whimsical bar code and the phrase, "Time is on the other side". A card edge is visible at the bottom edge.

markmccaughrean, (edited ) to random
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Fellow nerds: I have the nasty feeling I’m going to be embarrassed when one of you tells me why this equation is printed on the back of the timer I just bought 😬

Or is it just a branding thing? 🧐

maehem,
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@markmccaughrean Do not point at distant stars, as a tear in spacetime might result.

maehem,
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@markmccaughrean This sounds like a challenge for the Quantum Physics community.

tubetime, to random
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Allegro layout software, circa 1990.

maehem,
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@tubetime Allegro (and Cadence? Schematic capture) was my first tool for making professional PCBs. It was what Sun used for hardware design. Eventually learned Eagle so that we could do more in our department "under the radar". Our Allegro "tape out" had to go through a PCB department and generally had long delays whenever hotter projects had priority.

maehem, to random
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Results of soldering in the pot using my custom footprint that allows mounting it from the back so that only the rotory post is showing. Mounting pins are trimmed off and the signal pins are re-bent to meet the PCB pads. Pot is Tayda Electronics https://taydaelectronics.com A-1850 (10k version).

PCB before soldering with components laying nearby.
Pot blind mounted by soldering to the metal parts of the frame and rebending the pins over to the pads.
Edge view of the PCB with the parts soldered in.

maehem, to random
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Ran across this going through my old stuff. The pre-pre-pre-release docs for the SPARCstation-2 (Calvin). Was given to us lowly techs who were destined to debug them coming off the manufacturing line. When I started at Sun, I was a lowly failure analysis technician, the good jobs went to Stanford grads, DeVRY grads needed to come in through the back door. Eventually made my way into engineering and then SunLabs (where the real party was).
#suntember #sparcstation #sparcstation2 #sunw

List of features to be found on the SPARCstation2 motherboard during pre-release. 40MHz clock and a whopping 64MBytes max on the board! Good times!
A couple of schematic pages from the SPARCstation2 while still under development. Legend says "P0" which was usually very early in the development status.
SPARCstation2 Hardware overview page showing some timing diagrams for the reset timing along with a block diagram of the main board.

Iggi1968, to random German

#Suntember ahead of time a beauty! And the design of the DC/DC board lightyears ahead!

image/png
image/png

maehem,
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@Iggi1968 The Sun Voyager took on a second life as a tablet computer prototype. A different team (in Sun Labs) took the design and mangled it into a tablet prototype.We called it R.O.V.E.R meaning Remote Operation of Vast Electronic Resources. Mosaic Browser was just about to come out and the pairing was obvious once we saw it. It was heavy, but ran an optimized version of SunOS and had a tethered pen input. Photos have more description.

#suntember #sunlabs #prototype #sparcstation

An enclosed Sun R.O.V.E.R prototype. A heavy but handheld tablet developed at Sun Microsystems around 1992.
Side view of the internals for the Sun R.O.V.E.R prototype. Essentially the guts of a SPARCstation Voyager, compressed into a tablet with the weight of a dying star. A SBus expansion slot can be seen poking out from the main board. Touch screen controller board can be seen in the lower left of the photo. Upper left is the heat sink on a DC-DC controller. Center is part of the metal frame that holds the same changeable AC/DC power supply(or battery) as the Sun Voyager. Bottom is the LCD display, same as what is found in a Sun Voyager.
Rear view of the internals for the Sun R.O.V.E.R prototype. Essentially the guts of a SPARCstation Voyager, compressed into a tablet with the weight of a dying star. A SBus expansion slot can be seen poking out from the main board (top). Touch screen controller board can be seen in the lower right of the photo. Lower left is the heat sink on a DC-DC controller. Center is part of the internal metal frame that holds the same changeable AC/DC power supply(or battery) as the Sun Voyager. Face down is the LCD display, same as what is found in a Sun Voyager.

SinclairSpeccy, to tech

You have gazed into the hypnotic depths of the SPARCcenter 2000E, and now you're on a mission: Going back to 1997 to snag one of these bad boys!

#Tech #Computer #RetroTech #Server #90s #Sun #Solaris #Retro #RetroTechnology #RetroComputers #VintageComputer #RetroComputing #September #Suntember #SunMicrosystems

SPARCcenter 2000E: the powerful, scalable, expandable enterprise server. Whether you need support for one division, your entire business, or anything in between, the SPARCcenterN system is always the right size for your client-server environment. That's it's an open, easily expandable, affordable system with the power to run mission-critical applications. In fact, this is the ideal platform for rightsizing from a mainframe. SPARCcenter 2000E is at the high end of Sun's family of servers. They all run the Solaris' operating environment, and some of the SPARCcenter 2000E system's exceptional power is a direct result of the multiprocessing capabilities of Solaris. Every time you add a processor, you dramatically increase database, application, and network file service performance. But that's not all you get from those extra processors, because Solaris also supports multithreading, which runs a single application in parallel, with lower overhead and better scalability.
An ideal partner for your existing computing environment. We're in the business of creating innovations to help make you more competitive, but we also understand the need to protect your current investment. So the SPARCcenter 2000E can be integrated into the most complex multivendor environment. Along with the superior networking capabilities of UNIX,' we support every leading network protocol for host-based or client-server processing, making it easier to transparently access the data and applications on your mainframe, minicomputers, and PCs. You can also choose from the leading relational database management systems, programming tools, end-user applications, and networking products. That means you can keep using your existing hardware and software, reducing retraining costs.
SPARCcenter 2000E Specifications

maehem,
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@SinclairSpeccy I was a lab tech on the SC1000 and SC2000. I have PTSD from the hours of probing the back plane and capturing signal integrity measurements using Polaroid captures of the scope image. The PTSD part comes from the part where could accidentally short a couple pins on the bus ASIC and cause the PLL to go into a self destruct state. So you'd have to be ready to cut bench power with your free hand, otherwise you'd spend the next hour soldering in a new chip. Great team of folks!

georgetakei, to random

More great news on the war against inflation! The Consumer Price Index increased just 0.2% in July, or 2.4% per year. Last spring inflation was running at over 9%. The markets are rising on the news, and so should our spirits!

maehem,
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@georgetakei This is the equivalent of plugging a hole in a boat. Here's to a couple years of deflation (a negative number) to get the prices back down and raise the boat back up.

georgetakei, to random

Just like a mob boss would! “If you weren’t such a p*ssy you’d do this for me. You’re too honest! It’s aspirational!”

maehem,
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@georgetakei was on a jury a few years ago. We convicted rather quickly based on intent with circumstantial evidence.

maehem, to random
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When a client with deep pockets asks me to quote something that is custom work with mostly materials costs and they're like, "Do I need to prepay?". Yes. You f**king need to prepay.

markmccaughrean, to random
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Every night around 1am, Tigger (loudly) insists on being walked in the garden 🐈

And every night for the past four while doing so, I’ve seen a satellite passing more or less west to east, peaking at ~40-50° elevation 🛰️

It’s on roughly the same track as the ISS takes here, but while bright, ~0 mag, it’s not ISS bright.

And Heavens Above says the ISS flew over 10 mins earlier each time & that there’s no other satellite that bright scheduled.

What is Tigger trying to tell me? 😱🙀

maehem,
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@markmccaughrean One of the Russians probably forgot to tie something down?

maehem, to random
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Blast from the past. World's first working internet toaster. Made as a gag for April Fools around 1998 at Sun Labs. Showed ads on the LCD screen while your bread got golden. Processor was a CellPC running linux, a small compute module for embedded designs. It seemed like a joke at the time because people were talking about how everything in the future would have a small computer in it. Look at us now almost 25 years later! [Edit: it's been pointed out that an earlier toaster exists from 1989.]

It has several serial ports in the base!
Lines of text displayed on the screen by Linux (too small to read).
The guts of the toaster computer. Mounted underneath in a black PolyCase enclosure. A CellPC brand module connected to a small hard drive. Power supply lower left. Lots of wires!

rc2014, to random

The red LED was a huge breakthrough, which I think we all agree on. And the blue LED was a massive game changer, resulting in a Nobel prize. Even if blue LEDs are overused these days, they were key in paving the way for the white LED.

The next big thing will surely be the brown LED. Once scientists have cracked that, then we're well on our way to the black LED. So, come on scientists, stop resting on your laurels, and get on with brown LED development! Stat!

maehem,
@maehem@mastodon.social avatar

@rc2014 still waiting for brown neon.

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