Guess I'll revive an old thread vs start a new one. Recent events have led me to get out some various systems and figure out what their status was. One of these is a Sparcbook S1 (presumably also a "sparcbook 1"). First challenge was no power adapter. I found a local distributor that had some
12-24v 90w universal notebook power adapter (that's not who I bought it from, it's just the same one I'm using which seems like the manufacturer doesn't want any business stamping their name or any detail linking it back to them on the thing lol). Anyway, $20 and was actually buying it in hope that one of the tips would fit a PepperPad 3 I recently purchased (naturally, it doesn't fit the pepperpad) BUT to my luck sure does fit the Tadpole sparcbook. I'm not sure which tip or if the tip has a name or I'd share that information for those looking, but for now I can just link the above as the product (they have a different model number on the site for whatever reason) the model number is lp-2440.
So, starting out and after a quick PM with Dwight to figure out what the power specs are (18v, 3.1A and internal polarity is +). The system comes up, then the monitor and status lights on the top left go out again but the system comes back (although no lights on the monitor come back which I thought was odd). The system in my case did pass the self-test and found the internal hard drive and boots to /vmunix and came up. Naturally after some default username/password combos not working I started seeking more information to either get to a monitor rom prompt or other boot method. In this instance and some trial and error I found booting the system and hitting any key during the SPARCbook Monitor Fast Diagnostics (space bar) it cancels the check and gives you a menu for options.
This is SPARCbook Monitor v2.15 btw, results may vary depending on rom version and OS version.
1> Continue with automatic system startup
2> Boot operating system or file
3> Standalone Restore
4> Enter system diagnostics
Long story short, I selected 2 to choose to boot alternate file (also option 2). The default btw is drive 0, partition 0 and boot file is /vmunix. If you select to boot your own alternate file it will ask what device the file exists on. Option 1 is Hard Disk (2 - Floppy, 3 - Ethernet, 4 - SCSI). I chose hard disk. It asks "Enter File specification" (it's looking for drivenumber partitionnumber filename). In this case "0 0 /vmunix -s" will work and boot SunOS 4.1.2 (which is what I have on this system) into single user mode. If it's a default build it won't ask you for a password and you'll probably get right in. From here you can
type "vi /etc/passwd" to edit the password file. Arrow around to root (probably the first user) and replace whatever the encrypted password is with nothing for now so it looks like "root::0:1:Operator:/:/bin/csh" (the last two sections can vary depending on the system). There are some vi cheatsheets out there but to make this a simple doc, "x" deletes the character you're on. You can hit x a bunch of times until you're at the :: or you could put your cursor to the right of the : and on the first letter of the encrypted password and type "dw" which will delete the current word. That will probably leave you with :: or you can delete there rest of the files with "x". The important part is the lack of a password hash. You can also probably just type passwd root and reset the password right then and there but this is the most common comment folks recommend. Once you've modified the file properly (make sure that's right!! I don't know if a system will come up properly if this is corrupted) hit Escape once, type ":" to get into command mode, and do "wq" to write and then quit the editor. You should be back at your prompt and you can type "reboot" to reboot the system, it should come back and automatically boot the default boot file (without the -s argument) and when you're at the login prompt, log in as root, password is blank so hit enter and you should be in. From here you can do whatever with other docs out there. "passwd" will let you set the password to something you want instead.
Another interesting item is the system boots up fine without the battery. The battery compartment is the left side of the laptop where that large screw is. If you twist that screw just barely to the right it will pop that door open and you can remove the battery. Mine has some slight corrosion on one of the metal contacts which I haven't attempted to clean yet. I thought by removing the battery on mine it had fixed the led indicator on the monitor, so now with it removed I get my green power light, but after troubleshooting again I put the battery back in and still have the power light. I don't normally see the other lights on so I'm not sure how correctly it's working but it was interesting to note that it's possible corrosion or bad battery might throw off that little led circuit which certainly made it misleading when powering the system on the first time.
I haven't figured out much yet and have yet to find a manual. If someone has a spare or knows where one is online I'd love to see it. I haven't figured out how to get any of the keyboard function commands to work yet. One document online suggested pause+a, pause+other commands which doesn't work on this one, nor did function+a or function+r or other combinations of ctrl/alt/function+r).
One interesting note is the system seems to put the hard drive in standby mode after a certain amount of time if it isn't used. You can hear the hard drive spin down. Pressing any key brings it back.
Of course, while typing this the monitor just went out and I'm not sure if it just burned out or what lol so maybe a step back again. Still I wanted to put some of this information on a popular site for reference since it was rather difficult to find. If I find a manual I'll post it, I haven't fully tried searching archive.org on the old tadpole/sun site. I've found manuals for the 3gx or 3 series but nothing for the 1 as of right now. I'll post more info as I find it assuming I can get the monitor back up (maybe it's an undervoltage thing or lack of battery?).. this particular system also has an odd squeel/beep noise when shutting off that might be a capacitor discharging or I suppose could just be something else. Ah, I see.. the backlight went out so I have black text on an unlit screen now. Well, enough for now.
Need to track one of those down and then get an IBM Thinkpad 850 to run AIX and close a gap in my OS fun.
