Title: Greetings from France
Post by: NeXT_FR74 on October 01, 2020, 12:46:55 PM
Post by: NeXT_FR74 on October 01, 2020, 12:46:55 PM
Hi all, new forum user here !
I'm having this color slab since ages and now I have a dedicated room for my vintage stuff so I decided to give a try if the box would start and run.
My color slab is complete and in mint condition, almost like new ^^.
It has 12MB ram and HP C3728S 2.1GB drive, 17" color monitor works like a charm just like soundbox,mouse and keyboard.
I plugged the AppleCD 600e I have with the workstation and then pressed the power button on the keyboard ...
The workstation started with the typical sound, show testing in progress then loading from disk ... and tada the Workspace !
I tried to launch some apps and navigate the disk, run fsck without any errors.
The workstation is working like a charm.
Well that's great but I totally forgot how much noise these old hard drives were making. So I decided to order a SCSI2SD V6 board just in case of the internal drive will not last long ...
some photos of all the materials I have :
(https://www.casimages.com/i/201001074450154692.jpg.html)
(https://www.casimages.com/i/20100107242487084.jpg.html)
(https://www.casimages.com/i/201001072448353953.jpg.html)
(https://www.casimages.com/i/201001072337450043.jpg.html)
(https://www.casimages.com/i/20100107224463176.jpg.html)
(https://www.casimages.com/i/201001072215302197.jpg.html)
So now I have to figure out what to do with this workstation ?
I saw memory modules on ebay but does it worth buying ?
Can we find the DSP memory extension module somewhere ?
I'm having this color slab since ages and now I have a dedicated room for my vintage stuff so I decided to give a try if the box would start and run.
My color slab is complete and in mint condition, almost like new ^^.
It has 12MB ram and HP C3728S 2.1GB drive, 17" color monitor works like a charm just like soundbox,mouse and keyboard.
I plugged the AppleCD 600e I have with the workstation and then pressed the power button on the keyboard ...
The workstation started with the typical sound, show testing in progress then loading from disk ... and tada the Workspace !
I tried to launch some apps and navigate the disk, run fsck without any errors.
The workstation is working like a charm.
Well that's great but I totally forgot how much noise these old hard drives were making. So I decided to order a SCSI2SD V6 board just in case of the internal drive will not last long ...
some photos of all the materials I have :
(https://www.casimages.com/i/201001074450154692.jpg.html)
(https://www.casimages.com/i/20100107242487084.jpg.html)
(https://www.casimages.com/i/201001072448353953.jpg.html)
(https://www.casimages.com/i/201001072337450043.jpg.html)
(https://www.casimages.com/i/20100107224463176.jpg.html)
(https://www.casimages.com/i/201001072215302197.jpg.html)
So now I have to figure out what to do with this workstation ?
I saw memory modules on ebay but does it worth buying ?
Can we find the DSP memory extension module somewhere ?
Title: Re: Greetings from France
Post by: barcher174 on October 01, 2020, 02:59:34 PM
Post by: barcher174 on October 01, 2020, 02:59:34 PM
Welcome! For sure I would consider increasing the RAM. You will see a noticeable performance improvement.
Title: Re: Greetings from France
Post by: BillAnderson on October 03, 2020, 06:47:07 PM
Post by: BillAnderson on October 03, 2020, 06:47:07 PM
Welcome! You may consider installing a silent fan while you have the case open. Between the fan and the SD hard drive, it will be quieter than a laptop.
Here is an example that I use in mine: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0119SLG18
Here is an example that I use in mine: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0119SLG18
Title: Re: Greetings from France
Post by: NeXT_FR74 on October 04, 2020, 11:47:31 AM
Post by: NeXT_FR74 on October 04, 2020, 11:47:31 AM
Yes that's a good idea !
I have one 80mm Artic in stock I don't use at now so I will try it in the slab.
Searching for a way to have an LCd instead of the old big 17", I found a list of working SOG capable monitors here http://ps-2.kev009.com/sog/ (http://ps-2.kev009.com/sog/)
I can find here some very cheap 17" for less than 20€ (23$) that are SOG capable, so I ordered on ebay a simple 13w3 to vga adapter for cheap.
Then I found a 19" Philips that states SOG compatible in the manual for only 12€(14$) just near where i live.
As soon as I receive the 13w3 adapter I will do a test, It will be a lot of fun to keep this workstation alive. I will try to compile some old stuff, I did not code in C/C++ since ages.
I have one 80mm Artic in stock I don't use at now so I will try it in the slab.
Searching for a way to have an LCd instead of the old big 17", I found a list of working SOG capable monitors here http://ps-2.kev009.com/sog/ (http://ps-2.kev009.com/sog/)
I can find here some very cheap 17" for less than 20€ (23$) that are SOG capable, so I ordered on ebay a simple 13w3 to vga adapter for cheap.
Then I found a 19" Philips that states SOG compatible in the manual for only 12€(14$) just near where i live.
As soon as I receive the 13w3 adapter I will do a test, It will be a lot of fun to keep this workstation alive. I will try to compile some old stuff, I did not code in C/C++ since ages.
Title: Re: Greetings from France
Post by: NeXT_FR74 on October 19, 2020, 03:50:56 PM
Post by: NeXT_FR74 on October 19, 2020, 03:50:56 PM
Hello,
some news of my slab.
I received today the V6 2020c scsi2sd board and tried it immediatly with a 16GB class 10 sd card.
Created 2 virtual disks, target 1 with NS3.3 image and target 2 loaded with OPENSTEP 4.2 image. The images were taken from winworldpc website from the previous archives.
here is a photo of my slab with the cheap lcd panel, the new silent fan and the scsci2sd board temporary connected :
(https://www.casimages.com/i/201019102533390804.jpg.html)
Now I just need to find cheap 4MB(70ns) modules to install all the 32MB available ...
NS3.3 booted up without any problem and works flawlessely. This image is a fresh new install so all the updates and patches have to be applied and I will do it later ...
OpenStep 4.2 booted up but I got a kernel panic early in the boot process. So I booted the disk in single user mode to give a look and found quite quickly what was the problem. The image was created while the disk was at target one, so the os tried to boot sd0 instead of sd1. I just gave a fix to fstab and all booted up cleanly and flawlessely.
Now I have some questions :
- what is the best for the block storage size ? for my testing I keep the 512 value, but does a value of 4k or 8k will give some performance improvments ?
- what is the best OS for this black hardware , keep NS3.3 or latest version of OpenStep which should have some enhancements over NS3.3 ?
- is there any hard drive benchmark app ? for now I tested with a class 10 sdcard but maybe slower older sd card is enough, I would like to make some benchmarks ...
some news of my slab.
I received today the V6 2020c scsi2sd board and tried it immediatly with a 16GB class 10 sd card.
Created 2 virtual disks, target 1 with NS3.3 image and target 2 loaded with OPENSTEP 4.2 image. The images were taken from winworldpc website from the previous archives.
here is a photo of my slab with the cheap lcd panel, the new silent fan and the scsci2sd board temporary connected :
(https://www.casimages.com/i/201019102533390804.jpg.html)
Now I just need to find cheap 4MB(70ns) modules to install all the 32MB available ...
NS3.3 booted up without any problem and works flawlessely. This image is a fresh new install so all the updates and patches have to be applied and I will do it later ...
OpenStep 4.2 booted up but I got a kernel panic early in the boot process. So I booted the disk in single user mode to give a look and found quite quickly what was the problem. The image was created while the disk was at target one, so the os tried to boot sd0 instead of sd1. I just gave a fix to fstab and all booted up cleanly and flawlessely.
Now I have some questions :
- what is the best for the block storage size ? for my testing I keep the 512 value, but does a value of 4k or 8k will give some performance improvments ?
- what is the best OS for this black hardware , keep NS3.3 or latest version of OpenStep which should have some enhancements over NS3.3 ?
- is there any hard drive benchmark app ? for now I tested with a class 10 sdcard but maybe slower older sd card is enough, I would like to make some benchmarks ...