Suggestion: ditch 2.5.1 if you're using that, and switch to 2.6 as 2.6 has it's own CPR built in. I really do wish this was Sol7, but whatever...

Click to return to the top.

Disassembling the SPARCbook

So far so bad...  I gingerly popped open my sparcbook today.  I first removed
the battery and the hard drive.

Disassembly/Assembly instructions.

(Standard disclaimers, blah, blah, if you do this and you kill your sparcbook
don't come crying to me, blah, blah, this is dangerous, blah, blah, use static
mats and wrist straps, blah, blah, etc, etc....)


Yep, two screws under the pop up feet, another hidden under a round rubber
plug.  After that you have to open the LCD, and slowly wiggle it.

The peice of plastic attached to it (the screen) that also covers the status
LCD display and two power LED's comes off leaving the keyboard.  Be very
careful not to stress or yank the LCD data cable which is a bunch of lose
wires going to a plug.

Next there's a small black screw on top of the keyboard hold it down.  Remove
this and wiggle the keyboard.  This comes off and you can flip it up on top of
the LCD screen - which by now should be flat.  Be careful not to break
anything.

Next the keyboard itself is indeed a Lexmark (IBM thinkpad) keyboard.  It has
two flat plastic connectors - sort of a plastic film with copper traces on
it.  One is very thin - I suspect it's the accupoint, the other is wider and
is very likely the keyboard itself.

The keyboard is attached to the magnezium(?) bezel by 3 PLASTIC screws.  Why
plastic?  Maybe so incase they fall in it won't short out your book?  It's
also attached to the sides with copper tape.  Careful when you peel these off
so not to rip them.  Maybe they're for heat dissipation or grounding.  Once
they're off the keyboard comes out of the bezel (the 3 mouse buttons remain on
the bezel.)


Unfortunatley on mine, the plastic film cables were indeed nice and tight.  I
suspect it's inside the keyboard that they're lose, or that the accupoint
mouse pointer is indeed dead.  I believe this is due to heat - either it
caused the wires to melt off or fall off or it damaged the accupoint. -- See
the SPARC CPU is soldered upside down on the motherboard right under the
middle of the keyboard (which makes sense for the copper tape being used to
possibly dissipate heat.)

Ok, to put things back together, go backwards.  First, push the keyboard back
in its bezel making sure that the screw holes align and that it's flush
against the buttons.  Then screw in the 3 plastic screws.

Then carefully place the keyboard bezel back on top of the machine - there are
metal flanges on the sides next to the PCMCIA and HD ports that you'll have to
tuck back in.  Make sure the keyboard belzel screw hole lines up.  Screw in
the small black phillips screw.

Next, be VERY careful with the display.  Align it carefully and slowly lower
it onto the bottom half of the sparcbook. Once it's in, close the lid making
sure it doesn't fall out of alignment.

Flip the book over, screw in the two large screws under the feet, and the
smaller aluminum flathead screw in the middle, close the feet, put the rubber
stopper back on the aluminum screw.

Put the hard disk in FIRST, then the battery - soon as you put the battery in
the sparcbook turns on!  Close the battery compartment door and lock it.  Flip
the book over, and open the lid...  Hopefully it will boot up. :)

Mine did, but scared me a bit.  The LCD flickered a few times. :(  I didn't
have time to take it apart againt, and I won't until I get a replacement
keyboard....


For those who are curious, I did take 3 pictures, but I've about 21 more
frames on that roll of film, so you'll have to hold your breath for a while.

Can I just post them as attachments on here or does the mailing list not allow
them? (If not, I'll throw'em on a web page.)


As for my poor book, I'm gonna look for Thinkpad part dealers and see who has
the right model, and yup, it's basically a thinkpad with a custom
motherboard...  Hopefully the new keyboard won't be too expensive...


--
---------------------------- Kaos Keraunos Kybernetos --------------------
 + ^ +  Sunder              "The real aim of current policy is to     /|\
  \|/   sunder@sunder.net ensure the continued effectiveness of   /\|/\
<--*--> ALLOW FREE EXPORT    OF US information warfare assets against\/|\/
  /|\   STRONG CRYPTOGRAPHY! individuals,businesses and governments   \|/
 + v +  PROTEST WASSENAAR!!! in Europe and elsewhere" -- Ross Anderson
---------------------------- http://www.sunder.net -----------------------

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Adding backlighting to the LCD status pannel, and repairing a broken pointer

Ok, so over the weekend I've done some rather nasty Sparcbook Surgery with
some good success.


The previous standard disclaimers about NOT doing this to your sparcbook and
about how you could damage it and destroy it beyond repair and voiding
whatever warranty you may have apply.  Strongly.  (Also let us not totally
ignore that standard disclaimer about technical gobbledygook for those who
start to snore reading such things...)


What? You're still reading this after that stern warning? Well, ok, I'll tell
you about it.

I found a Thinkpad repair shop in The Processor and ordered a Thinkpad
Keyboard (they wouldn't just sell me the Accupoint mouse pointer by itself.)
It was $65 for a keyboard for a TP 365 (I bought this model since I have a
real IBM Thinkpad 365 at home - figuring that it wouldn't hurt to have some
spare parts around.)

What's the logic behind this?  Welp, I popped off the keys to both the
sparcbook and the Thinkpad and have noticed that the nipple pointer (accupoint
for those who have no imagination) is nothing more than a mini joystick
surface mounted on a small triangular PC board.  (The keys to pop off are
V,B,N,G,H, and J.)

There is a flat clear orange colored plastic strip with copper leads inside of
it that provides the signals to the SparcBook.

Both the Thinkpad and the Sparcbook have this device and it looks identical.
It almost is.

However the cables are different.  The sparcbook one has a different path than
my TP365's.  Enough so that I couldn't just plug the TP one into the
Sparcbook's port.

Here's where it gets ugly.

The keyboards themselves if you take them apart (PLEASE DO NOT!) are composed
of a plastic top containing small round holes with punchers in them.  Above
those go plastic calamari like rubber pieces that provide the keyboard
bouncyness.  Above those go the keycaps.  Under the plastic board are two
clear plastic sheets with inlaid flat wires (copper maybe?)  When you strike a
key the contacts on the two sheets mate and cause a signal.  Behind this is
the aluminum cover, etc.  On my Sparc this is taped down (yuck!).

So far so good, right?  The problem is that the accupoint (what, you expected
me to call it a nipple twice?) goes between them!  To get the Accupoint out,
you'll have to disassemble the keyboard, which isn't too hard.  If you pop off
ALL the keys, you'll notice clips keeping the aluminum backing locked to the
plastic top.

But aluminum cover will bend out of shape if you remove it, and thus you'll
destroy your keyboard!!!  Yes, push the clips down if you will, but I've not
found the right way of doing this, if you know how, let me know.  No, I'm not
a dumbass, I didn't destroy my Sparcbook keyboard.  I destroyed the spare
Thinkpad 365 keyboard. :)  Thanks for asking.

Ok, so I managed to get the accupointer out.  Now for the second part of the
nightmare.  (And this took most of 3 hours of labor to get right.)

So now that I removed the accupointer out of the TP365 kb, I had to remove the
old accupointer out of the Sparcbook keyboard.  That was easy, since it was
dead, I simply cut it out with a razor blade.

Getting the new one in was a chore since the flat plastic wire doesn't have
the same path, and even if it did I wasn't about to take my one and only
Sparcbook keyboard apart.  :)

So I ran it around and under the keys, under my right Alt key (which was dead
anyway) into the area where the three mouse buttons are and from there to the
back of the keyboard.  So far so good, now the fun part: getting to mate with
the port on the sparcbook...

I'm fairly good with a soldering iron and I had some scrap thin wire around
from a (oh the irony!) dead Microsoft Mouse.  (heh!).  I soldered wires onto
the flat tinned connector coming from the accupointer that would go inside the
sparcbook.

The problem with this is that the leads are too close together and I kept
soldering shorts from adjacent leads.  That sucked.  So I took my Xacto and
separated them out.  One by one, I soldered a wire to each lead and covered it
with tape to keep 'em from shorting.  That took about an hour of careful
soldering and left a flat mess of wires on the back of the keyboard.  No
problem.   Half of the problem was solved.

The remaining: now that I have six wires, how do I "plug 'em" in to the
Sparcbook's rat connector?  Welp, guess what I still have the dead accupointer
that was originally in there.  I cut off it's plug and proceeded to slowly
shave the plastic off the leads until I had exposed each of the six wires.
After that, some more soldering and hot melt glue did the trick in isolating
them from shorting.

I plugged everything back in careful to not crimp any wires or short anything
out.

Part two: someone suggested that a light up status LCD pannel would be nice to
have.  Solution: hot glue two LED's to the side of the panel.  It worked, only
I've not found a source for good juice to power them from.  I'll take
suggestions.  What I used: the green charging LED.  I soldered my two new
LED's to this LED's solder joints (which are right under the status panel.)
Be careful if you do this as you could short out other components, and if
solder falls in the board, you hose your Sparcbook.

It worked except the charging LED doesn't have enough power to run three
LED's, so the two new ones are VERY dim.  So no backlight (yet!)  I just need
to trace where the incoming power gets converted to +5V and GND - no only a
dumbass will connect a pair of 3v LED's to a 12V power supply. :)

I'll solder these to that. (+5V/GND)  I'd rather not get it from the battery
circuit as the two LED's will suck up much needed battery power (yes, I know
they're low wattage, but every millisecond of battery run time counts and all
that...)

So at the end I closed everything back up carefully and nicely and powered her
up.

[Another interesting side note:  The Sparcbook has a solder jumper for the
memory voltage.  There's one for 5V and one for 3.3V.  So if you can find low
voltage RAM, that MIGHT work and drain less battery, but then again, it might
not...]


Results of Hacking:

Guess what: the accupointer worked with one small hitch.  The Vertical and
Horizontal directions were swapped.  Yup, to go UP I'd have to drag the
pointer LEFT! :)

Ok, so the next time I'm gonna take the 6 wires into a breakout box and figure
out which is what...  (This is low priority...)

There are six wires, and four directions, so I suppose two of those are power?
and the remaining four are Up, Down, Left, Right.  Not 100% sure on this, but
it's my guess.  So I'll have to figure out which wires to swap around while
the sparcbook is running...


Comments?  Love to hear 'em.  Esp if they are hints as to what pins are what
on the accupointer and where to steal +5V for the backlight LED's. :^)
--
---------------------------- Kaos Keraunos Kybernetos --------------------
 + ^ +  Sunder              "The real aim of current policy is to     /|\
  \|/   sunder@sunder.net ensure the continued effectiveness of   /\|/\
<--*--> ALLOW FREE EXPORT    OF US information warfare assets against\/|\/
  /|\   STRONG CRYPTOGRAPHY! individuals,businesses and governments   \|/
 + v +  PROTEST WASSENAAR!!! in Europe and elsewhere" -- Ross Anderson
---------------------------- http://www.sunder.net -----------------------

Click to return to the top.

Here are the pictures related to the above hack:

And here is a vertical view of the same. Under the SPARCbook you can see the battery compartment cover, the battery stick, and the thin aluminum metal RAM cover (too dark to see it in this picture as silver colored, but it is.)
Here is the wire connctor removed the dead Accupoint and scanned in at 2400dpi so as to show the pin outs:

Click to return to the top.

Upgrading MicroSpeed Trackballs for SPARC machines

The plastic balls that come with these trackballs suck ass and have a very
cheap feel to them.  Here's how to fix'em:

First, go and order a Kensignton Expert/Turbo Mouse replacement ball (PC/Mac
Warehouse, PC Zone, et al used to have'em as either "8-Ball" or iridescent
blue/red 2 years ago for $10-$15, not sure about now and I don't see it in
their catalog, but ask around.)

Buy one, or get the normal white one from someone who bought an 8-Ball or one
of those funky iridescent blue ones for their Kensington. :)

Next get a screw driver and open up the Microspeed.  Clean out all the debris
off the rollers - sadly the rollers here are cheap plastic rollers and part of
the "cheap" feel comes from them.  I've not found a way to replace these, but
if I come across a dead Kensington, or a suitable mouse/trackball with metal
rollers, it'll be worth a shot...  Anyway, clean them rollers and clean'em
well.

Then throw away the cheapo lightweight Microspeed ball and use the Kensington
one - they're the same exact size.  They've a much much better feel due to the
coating and the weight.  :)  Trust me, you'll like'em with it...

Then, every few months when the feel starts to get gritty take the trackball
apart, wash the ball, clean the rollers, and put it back together... :)


(What's really strange is that the Turbo/Expert Mouse trackballs never go
under $89... even after so many years...  Guess there's enough suckers like me
who like their quality...)

--
---------------------------- Kaos Keraunos Kybernetos --------------------
 + ^ +  Sunder              "The real aim of current policy is to     /|\
  \|/   sunder@sunder.net ensure the continued effectiveness of   /\|/\
<--*--> ALLOW FREE EXPORT    OF US information warfare assets against\/|\/
  /|\   STRONG CRYPTOGRAPHY! individuals,businesses and governments   \|/
 + v +  PROTEST WASSENAAR!!! in Europe and elsewhere" -- Ross Anderson
---------------------------- http://www.sunder.net -----------------------

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Open Letter to Tadpole. RDI regarding Solaris 7 drivers

To whom it may concern,

I, as well as many members of the sparcbook owner's mailing list, have
recently purchased $200 and $400 SparcBook 3GS's and 3GX's.  These came with
older versions of Solaris, specifically 2.5.1.

Many of us have purchased Solaris 7 directly from Sun, some as hobbyist
licenses, I personally have purchased a subscription from SunSoft a few years
ago, right before the release of 2.6 for both Intel and Sparc distributions,
and thus we own licenses to use Solaris 7.

We thank you for releasing the 2.6 Tadpole patches enabling us to run Solaris
2.6 on our notebooks.

I understand that recent conversations with your company have described that
you are ready to release a version of the Solaris 7 patches bundled with a
copy of Solaris 7, but have no plans at this time to release the actually
Solaris 7 patches on your website or to even sell them individually.

I find it rather expensive to purchase an extra copy of Solaris 7 with patches
for $400 for a notebook that I've paid only $200.  I would be perfectly
willing to purchase the patches individually for a reasonable price, say
$50-$100.

If it would be alternatively possible, I would also be perfectly willing to
mail you my copy of Solaris 7 as I have received it for Sun in return for a
copy that has the Tadpole Sol 7 patches with it.

Please understand that we are mostly hobbyists and cannot justify paying $400+
dollars for yet a duplicate copy of Solaris, when we only require the patches
to make our notebooks useful.  There is no question of licensing as we have
already paid Sun for a license for them.

Many of us do not have copies of Solaris 2.6 as Sun no longer offers them at
the hobbyist price and thus cannot use the 2.6 patches as they are not
compatible with Solaris 7.

Some of us would happily run a free operating system such as Linux, friends,
BSD or Open BSD, however, the hardware drivers for these operating systems are
not yet available.  I personally would rather run Solaris on my SparcBook as I
am sure most of the owners of these notebooks would.

We hope that you will offer us an acceptable way to be able to use receive the
Solaris 7 patches.

Thank you for your time and understanding.
 -- Ray Arachelian.



--
---------------------------- Kaos Keraunos Kybernetos --------------------
 + ^ +  Sunder              "The real aim of current policy is to     /|\
  \|/   sunder@sunder.net ensure the continued effectiveness of   /\|/\
<--*--> ALLOW FREE EXPORT    OF US information warfare assets against\/|\/
  /|\   STRONG CRYPTOGRAPHY! individuals,businesses and governments   \|/
 + v +  PROTEST WASSENAAR!!! in Europe and elsewhere" -- Ross Anderson
---------------------------- http://www.sunder.net -----------------------

Click to return to the top.

If you can boot off the CD, you should be Ok.  Just to be safe, you might want
to hook up an external hard drive as well and dd your old one to it from the
CDROM.  (That is if you can still boot off the old drive)

Boot the cdrom from the Open Boot Prom this way: boot cdrom -SVR (-S says
single user mode, V says verbose R says reconfigure.)  This will keep the
install scripts from coming up.  If they do come up, hit Control-C to get at a
shell, then mount the external drive.  Run format to see the partitions on
your internal sparcbook disk and just do this:

dd if=/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 of=/mnt/slice0.dd
dd if=/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3 of=/mnt/slice3.dd
...
dd if=/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s7 of=/mnt/slice7.dd

etc... (change the paths as needed. Above assumes you mounted a big enough
slice off the external disk to /mnt, etc...)  Usually slice 1 is for swap,
slice 2 is the entire disk (don't bother dd'ing that) slice 4 is for the NCE
memory dump if your book has that enabled.

For Solaris newbies: c0 means SCSI controller 0, t0 means target 0 (scsi ID)
d0 means disk 0 or Logical Unit Number 0, s0 means slice 0 (partition 0).


I'd also get all the 2.6 Recommended and Y2K patches and install them right
after to bring Solaris up to date.

The installing and patching will take a long time, so make sure you have more
than adequate ventilation, since power management will not be working and
your CPU will run at full speed causing your powerbook to overheat.

Raising the feet is a good idea, aiming a fan/AC in addition is even better.

Re: version of 2.6:  I'm not sure which 2.6 I used, but it's likely a very old
one as Sun sent me CD's on the first edition of it.  I've had no problems with
the install.  It isn't sever though, it's the normal workstation, however I
suspect that won't affect anything.

Also: After you apply the Tadpole drivers, be sure to also apply the patches
to the tadpole drivers.

Download the drivers from:
ftp://ftp.tadpole.com/pub/sbu/S3-patches/Solaris_2.6/
The drivers are: TTI_Solaris_2.6_packages.tar.Z
 and the patches to these drivers
(to fix bugs) are bundled in: TTI_Solaris_2.6_patch_bundle.tar.Z

However, sometimes there are patches outside of the patch bundle, so please
visit their ftp site and download any patches that are not in the patch bundle.

So your install should be:

1. Install Solaris 2.6
2. Reboot
3. Install Tadpole Drivers
4. Install Tadpole driver patches.
5. Install latest Solaris 2.6 Recommended patches
6. Install latest Solaris 2.6 Y2K patches.
7. Install GNU software, etc. :)  (Make sure you leave enough room on /opt and
/usr/local for GNU wares - it's best to give these their own slices.)

I usually ftp my GNU warez from sunsite.unc.edu (now renamed to
metalab.unc.edu) :)  Solaris patches you get from Sun's ftp sites (or
access1.sun.com's driver page.)  Tadpole
patches from ftp.tadpole.com, etc...


"Scott D. Yelich" wrote:
>
> The FAQ is not clear.  I'm asking now, but I'll know myself, for sure,
> soon... as I've hosed my 2.5.1 by playing with it.
>
> I have Solaris 2.6 server, but only a 1997 version.  My question is, can
> I install this and put the 2.6 patches and still have a working system
> with a video driver?  The FAQ says that 3/98 (or 5/98?) seem to work
> fine... but does not state whether earlier or later versions work.

--
---------------------------- Kaos Keraunos Kybernetos --------------------
 + ^ +  Sunder              "The real aim of current policy is to     /|\
  \|/   sunder@sunder.net ensure the continued effectiveness of   /\|/\
<--*--> ALLOW FREE EXPORT    OF US information warfare assets against\/|\/
  /|\   STRONG CRYPTOGRAPHY! individuals,businesses and governments   \|/
 + v +  PROTEST WASSENAAR!!! in Europe and elsewhere" -- Ross Anderson
---------------------------- http://www.sunder.net -----------------------

Click to return to the top.

Carefully pry open both sides. Don't pull the two sides open all the way. You can remove the drive by sliding it out.

Next, pull the drive out and lay it down on upside down.

Next, remove the SCSI interface cable from the IDE-SCSI interface board. Be careful as there is an IDE bridge (two IDE connectors with a bit of ribbon cable) holding the IDE-SCSI interface card to the drive. You might wish to use a small flat head screw driver to remove these cables.
Now, carefully unscrew the original IBM 2Gb drive from the rails. They are normal Phillips screws, so this will be easy.

With my Toshiba 6.0Gb, drive I was able to reconstruct the drive with the IDE to SCSI interface board, but the rails stuck out a bit too far for it to fit back into the SPARCBook sled. So I didn't use the rails. Rather, I opted to use several FOAM rubber feet (NOT SOLID RUBBER!). I also placed these inside the four corners of the sled as you don't want anything pushing on the top of the drive.
Note that once assembled the drive will go in upside down. This is normal.
Here is the reassembled drive:

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