douglas@ms.uky.edu (John Douglas Turner) (02/13/90)
If I was to buy a Sun2/120 and later in life need to get it fixed and did
not have a University of company to pay the bill, but did have a knowledge
of electronics and could replace parts on boards or use a scope/meter how
much and how hard would the repair bills be and how long would things take
to get?
John Douglas Turner douglas@ms.uky.edu or douglas@UKMA.BITNET
University of Kentucky {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!douglas
902 Patterson Office Tower (606)-257-6824
Lexington, Ky. 40502 henry@zoo.toronto.edu (02/15/90)
>If I was to buy a Sun2/120 and later in life need to get it fixed and did >not have a University of company to pay the bill, but did have a knowledge >of electronics and could replace parts on boards or use a scope/meter how >much and how hard would the repair bills be and how long would things take >to get? I'd say this is not a recommended approach. The trouble is, to use this approach you generally need two things: detailed hardware documentation, and access to parts. From Sun you get neither. Sun hardware is Top Secret, even the old stuff. And many of the parts will probably (I've never seen a Sun 2 board) be things like PALs and ROMs that can't be ordered from an ordinary parts supplier unless you have programming data, not just part numbers. Troubleshooting something like a Sun CPU wouldn't be a trivial task even so, given that it's complex logic run very close to its limits. (On the Sun 3 they relaxed the design a little bit to give greater margins and make the things easier to build.) The lack of documentation and parts would make it next to impossible, I'd say. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu