SIMM placement in SPARCstation-2 ?

2007-12-25 7:20:00

My original question:

>I just received a SS-1 to SS-2 upgrade kit, and now I want to move my added

>(i.e., those beyond the base 8 MB) SIMM modules to the new SS-2 box.

>However, a neat little trick in the SS-2 Installation Guide is that the SIMM

>installation instructions, which previously (for SS-1s) were in an Appendix,

>have now been moved into a separate manual called "Installing SPARCstation 2

>SIMMs". Obviously, I don't own that manual, so I wonder:

>Would anyone offer me SS-2 SIMM installation maps (i.e., which SIMM sockets

>do I fill) ? I imagine that I still need to install groups of 4 identical

>SIMM modules. Do I fill the groups with the same symmetry as the factory-

>installed modules, e.g., should I add four modules in U0312-U0321-U0310-U0308 ?

Summary:

========

Some folks report working with my guessed configuration of placing extra

SIMMs behind the Sun-installed ones. Beware however that the SS-2 requires

80 nanosecond chips, as discussed previously on sun-managers. Thus Sun-

supplied SS-1/1+ SIMMs, which are slower than 80 ns, are not supported.

I am still missing the official Sun guidelines for SIMM placement, and

I ask any owner of the manual "Installing SPARCstation 2 SIMMs" to

send me the Correct placement rules.

A useful report was posted to alt.sys.sun by Jim Lick <jim@cave.sba.ca.us>:

! There were questions earlier about adding memory to a Sparc 2. I recently

! performed this operation and have some information to share...

! First, the arrangement of the banks have changed. In the Sparc 1 and 1+

! the banks were arranged as follows:

! Back Of Machine

! 4 ---------------- ---------------- 2

! 3 ---------------- ---------------- 1

! Front Of Machine

! In the Sparc 2 however, the arrangement is as follows:

! Back Of Machine

! 1 ---------------- ---------------- 1

! 2 ---------------- ---------------- 2

! 3 ---------------- ---------------- 3

! 4 ---------------- ---------------- 4

! 1 ---------------- ---------------- 1

! 2 ---------------- ---------------- 2

! 3 ---------------- ---------------- 3

! 4 ---------------- ---------------- 4

! Front Of Machine

! In each machine there are 4 banks of 4 simm slots for a total on 16

! simm slots. To add more memory in each machine you need to add a

! homegenouse block of 4 simms to the next available bank. In the

! Sparc 1 and Sparc 1+, the banks were organized such that banks were

! in blocks on the board. In the Sparc 2, the memory is organized

! so that each byte of the 32 bit word is in the same block on the

! board. I assume this was done to simplify the address line traces

! on the board.

! The other thing I found out was that 100 ns simms definetly don't

! work in the Sparc 2. I knew that even some 80 ns chips supposedly

! don't work. I didn't mean to try this either. What happened was

! that the memory arrived at a time when the Sparc 2 was working on

! some critical runs and couldn't be disturbed. So I threw the memory

! into our Sparc 1 in the mean time. When I got around to moving it

! over to the Sparc 2 where it was supposed to be, I managed to pull

! out one bank on 70ns simms and another of 100ns simms, which were

! what the Sparc 1 originally shipped with.

! I learned from this experience that the error codes given on the

! keyboard lights aren't always accurate. They told me that the

! problem was in the first bank of original Sun memory. I spent

! several minutes making sure that all simms were snug in their

! sockets before bothering to check the speeds. Once I got the

! 100ns chips out, and replaced with 70ns chips, the machine booted

! and ran fine with 24 megs of memory.

Also, someone learned from Parity the following bank installation order

(i.e., fill banks in the order 1-2-3-4):

1-------------- ---------------1

3-------------- ---------------3

2------------- ---------------2

4------------- ---------------4

1-------------- ---------------1

3-------------- ---------------3

2------------- ---------------2

4------------- ---------------4

Thanks to:

"Anthony A. Datri" <datri@lovecraft.convex.com>

jipping@frodo.cs.hope.edu (Mike Jipping)

dasun!murray@sunkist.West.Sun.COM (Mary Murray (Murray))

Claus Assmann <ca@idefix.informatik.uni-kiel.dbp.de>

Keith Pilotti <Pilotti@Jupiter.SAIC.COM>

steve%eastend@uu.psi.com (Steven Roth)

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SIMM placement in SPARCstation-2 ?

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