Sun 3/80 framebuffer woes

[pkhoury]

I was trying to run my 3/80 again last night. When I hook up a Type 5 keyboard, it detects the keyboard as a Type 4 (and the keyboard works). The weird part, is I cannot get ANY output to my framebuffer. Did some research and discovered it's the crappy mg4 bwtwo, not a nicer P4 color (like I have on my 3/60). When I tried mistakingly telling nvram that it was a P4 color non-3/60, the LCD acted as if it were getting a signal, but nothing was displayed (this was a week ago).

Last night, I confirmed it's set in NVRAM to monochrome, but nothing is displayed at all. I'm not sure if monochrome implies ECL, since the mg4 has both ECL and 13W3 connectors on board. So when the system comes up, I can type on the Type 5 keyboard, but output just appears in my putty session (serial). I get a message at boot (SunOS 4.1.1) saying no default framebuffer selected, or something to that effect. I don't know if it makes a difference, but I have tantalums on order to replace all of those on the mg4 framebuffer (total of 7 tants that I can replace).

It's set to diagnostic boot in NVRAM, but if I choose normal boot, nothing appears on either the LCD or the terminal. I upgraded the ROM to 3.0.3, though I read somewhere about some bodge wires needing to be done, depending on board revision (which I'm not sure how to figure out).

 

[tokenalt]

Check in the diagnostic boot if it's actually detecting a P4 framebuffer. The 13w3 connector should output an analog signal at 1152x900x66 with composite sync.

You do need bodge wires to upgrade the ROM on the 3/80. My board shipped with a 3.0.2 ROM and has lots of bodge wires. I tried the 3.0.3 ROM from sun3arc but it didn't work. Not sure if the ROM is bad or I just need more bodge wires.

 

[pkhoury]

I'll have to take pictures of my system board, but 3.0.3 otherwise does work, and I"m pretty sure I don't know the right number of bodge wires.

 

[pkhoury]

This is how it shows up while booting SunOS:

On an unrelated note, my machine does NOT like 64MB of RAM, so I went back to 32MB.