A picture of a SunPCi in its original packaging.
A picture of a disposable anti static wrist strap
Despite my #sunpci project being on hold due to two dead #sun ultra 10s (RIP). A SunPCi II arrived today!
I really love how it came with a disposable anti-static wrist band. That's such a great idea to prevent accidents, especially for this era of electronic […]
[Original post on mastodon.tmm.cx]
Given that my #sun ultra 10's are definitely dead until I get a bunch of replacement parts (hopefully just caps) I probably won't be able to finish the #sunpci video for #doscember (It'll still happen, just... not in December 😢)
I have a mostly written script and research for "OS/2 a better DOS […]
Some absolutely wonderful human is sending me a #sun blade 2500 for cost of shipping because they felt bad for my ultra 10s being broken and wanting the machine to be actually used again.
The #sunpci reverse engineering effort is about to be a lot easier!
Sometimes the #retrocomputing […]
Well, my #sun machine was resurrected it seems! I'm cautiously optimistic.
As a special treat here's a video showing off the #sunpci in #VGA mode. This is a capture of both the Solaris and DOS side at the same time. You can see how mouse movement on the […]
[Original post on mastodon.tmm.cx]
The general consensus appears to be that the problem is almost certainly dead NVRAM batteries. Apparently having bad/unstable NVRAMs can lead to all sorts of weird and wonderful issues.
I ordered some new ones, so lets hope that that can fix it so I can still finish my #SunPCi mini documentary […]
It's not all doom and gloom with the #sunpci app! Some of it is quake!
#retrocomputing
Perfect, absolutely no notes. Ready to ship this #sunpci client.
#retrocomputing
I can now also play back traces that I make from the #sunpci application! So now I don't need to have my ultra 10 powered on to even work on the client.
#retrocomputing
A sceenshot of two windows showing a BIOS screen. One is called "SunPCi" the other is called "SDL_app". They both seem to show a correct screen for both.
Some more progress on the #sunpci client! We now have text mode rendering on par with the original (which also doesn't properly seem to handle 9dot mode)
#retrocomputing
A picture of a Solaris 8 CDE desktop showing a window called "SDL_App" it is showing a BIOS boot screen in that window. There's a terminal window behind it showing that the program is called "./sdltest_solaris"
SDL1 is fiiiiiiiine
#retrocomputing #sunpci
After some more noodling with the #solaris kernel driver, behold the (as far as I am aware) only third-party #sunpci
driver program.
My program currently "emulates" the VGA text mode using #ncurses (poorly) but this makes development a lot faster!
Next up […]
[Original post on mastodon.tmm.cx]
A screenshot of mappings between SDL scancodes and random numbers.
If I had a dollar for each time I had to map #SDL scancodes to a random keyboard this year I'd have 3 dollars.
That's not a lot, but it's weird I have to do this every 4 months it seems.
There is something terribly wrong with me.
#retrocomputing #sunpci
A screenshot of a normal Award Modular Bios. It has two graphics mode logos interspersed with the text mode. An Award logo, and an Energy Star logo.
Also note in the above screenshot that the "Award Modular BIOS" screen does not have the normal logo. But there's still SPACE for a logo.
The fact that the #sunpci did not show the Award logo bothered me from the start.
The reason for this is obvious now […]
[Original post on mastodon.tmm.cx]
A picture of the SunPCi window booting with lots of debug messages behind it.
I spend a bit of time dissecting the #sunpci driver in #ghidra. And I can now boot the SunPCi from my own code! Using the #solaris driver still.
Some terrifying conclusions:
The windowed output in the SunPCi userspace application comes from repeatedly […]
[Original post on mastodon.tmm.cx]
A close up picture of a SunPCi card.
I'm putting together something fun about the #sunpci for #DOScember
What would you all like to know about it most! I'm testing compatibility with various DOSses, and games, of course! Any games/apps you want to see in particular?
Anything you're dying to […]
[Original post on mastodon.tmm.cx]
A screenshot of Speedsys. It shows a arddisk speed of 1266.6, which is entirely off the scale
Say what you will about the #sunpci the IDE hard disk emulation kinda slaps!
Do note that if you connect an external display to the #sunpci that Quake runs just fine!
#doscember #retrocomputing
First tests for doing something for #doscember
The #sunpci does leave something to be desired in the "full screen update" category.
This capture is entirely accurate to what is actually on the screen!
#unix #solaris #retrocomputing
A photo of a screen showing a Sun CDE desktop, on the desktop is a SunPCi window. In the SunPCi session there's a Microsoft Bob session running. The Bob letter writer is running, and it is showing the text "I don't know why people keep saying Unix is hard to use..."
A photo of a screen showing a Sun CDE desktop, on the desktop is a SunPCi window. In the SunPCi session there's a Microsoft Bob session running.
Wow! #sun #solaris is super duper easy to use! I don't understand why not everyone is using #unix !
#sunpci #retrocomputing
