Apollo stuff

[Bob Shannon]

10.4 does not include the SAU's for the very early machines.

I think mine run SR 9.7.5, which supports the DN660 and DN330's as
well as the 3xxx and 4xxx boxes.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jules Richardson" <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2005 8:21 AM
Subject: Re: Apollo stuff


> On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 12:37 +0100, Simon Fryer wrote:
>> The wall boxes are just fancy make before break connection boxes. The
>> ring works fine without them.
>
> That's good to hear :)
>
>> > We're still short a Domain keyboard here, and I think we only have one
>> > of the little interface cables that connects the network cabling to the
>> > token ring card itself - hopefully there's nothing special to those
>> > though and we can make something up. I'd just like to know if it's 
>> > vital
>> > to find the wall boxes though! :-)
>>
>> Most of the Apollo range happily talk to a serial console so a
>> screen/keyboard isn't really necessary. However in my not so humble
>> opinion, I am yet to see anything that is anywhere near as nice as the
>> GUI. .
>
> Agreed! I haven't tested all our earlier Apollos yet anyway, so it's
> possible that one might be beyond repair and so become a spare machine -
> freeing up a keyboard (I've not tried an early-style Domain keyboard on
> a later 4xx machine yet though; electrically they're compatible but I
> don't know if the protocol's the same)
>
>> From memory, they also boot happily across Ethernet. Although, 12Mb/s
>> Token ring is far nicer then 10Mb/s CSMA/CD.
>
> I've got a feeling that the earlier 3000-era machines don't have
> Ethernet as standard anyway (although a card could be added, but I have
> no idea what boards the OS would recognise). Using the ATR would seem
> like the way to go to make a little domain, with one of the later 4xx
> machines that also has an Ethernet interface being used to get to the
> outside world.
>
> Memory's perhaps going to be a problem though - I think a couple of our
> earlier machines are running rather short on RAM (and of course they're
> proprietary modules) - 10.4's the only OS release we have, which might
> not run on a memory-starved machine...
>
> cheers
>
> Jules
>
>