I woke up about 9.30am, hmm, I should get up, get ready, and leave, since it'll probably take me close to an hour to get to the computer fair in Newcastle, and that would mean I'd be there by about 11am, but I went back to sleep.

I heard the phone ring, I ignored it, it rang and rang and rang.

Then it rang again, oh for god's sake, give up, I'm not getting up to answer the phone.

Then my mobile rang, "private number", not answering that, leave a message, if it's important, then I'll ring you back.

They left a message, so I got called back, I answered it. It was my mate I go to dinner with at the tennis club every now and then, can I call him back on some Sydney number.

Perhaps he's down in Sydney trying to fix the Craptus cable modem connection he's rung me about several times.

I got up, and went over to the phone, and called him back.

Yep, he was down at someone's place in Sydney, trying to fix up their internet sharing on their network. Apparently the guy had everything working, the cable modem they had crapped itself, Craptus came out and replaced it, and when they saw he had a network, did something to bollocks up the sharing.

I assumed it was just that they'd unplugged the hub, and put it directly in to the pc, so he just had to put the hub back.

I found out what he was trying to do, and eventually managed to work out that the new cable modem was connected via usb to one of the pcs, and was also a bridging device, so the routable IP ended up on the pc. Yuck.

I told him how to enable internet connection sharing, he'd already tried that, but done it on the wrong interface, he'd put it on the network card attached to the LAN, rather than on the virtual interface of the usb connection to the cable modem.

As soon as he put it on the right interface, it all started working.

I finally got off the phone, it was now about 12.30pm. Hmm, don't think I'm going to get to the computer fair now.

I put the Utopia concert DVD on.

I went back to mucking around with the Sparc.

I can get output from it on the serial terminal, but I can't type anything, hit break, or get a boot prom prompt.

While looking around for more serial pinouts, in case I had the TX line connected to the wrong pin.

While googling for serial port and keyboard pinouts I came across the pinouts for the Model M IBM keyboard. I've got the one I got off the side of the road a few months ago, that doesn't have a cord, and this page had how to make one up.

I heard the phone ringing, didn't manage to answer it in time. I got called back, it was my mate again, he wanted to know if he could get me anything at any of the computer shops, on his way back from Sydney.

I called him back, and said I was after a couple of hard disks, I looked on the website of the place he was going to, but they didn't have Maxtor disks listed. I tried to call them, on both phone numbers on their site, but just got a message about "alll our staff are busy, please leave a message, or call later", and then it would have gone to the prompt for me to leave a message, but instead I was told "this messagebank is full, goodbye" and then it hangs up on me.

I called him back, and said I couldn't get through, so I don't know if they have Maxtor disks. he said he'd go to another place then.

I then went about pulling the Model M apart, and desoldering the weird 6 pin RJ socket from the PCB in the keyboard.

I don't know why I bothered, since I don't have a cable to solder on there, and I don't have any dud keyboards I could steal the cord off.

I had dinner, and watched a bit of tv.

The phone rang again, it was my mate from before. He'd gone to the other computer place, but forgotten that they are shut on Sunday.

About 9pm, I went back to mucking around with the Sparc again, I can only ever get it to come up, display "not nvramrc", then the initial boot message, with the MAC address, and serial number etc, and how much memory, then say "testing", and not go any further.

I found that it will boot if I have the unit open.

There's something suss with the memory, I've seen it boot up and say 48MB (the first time), 51MB, and now all the time it says 36MB.

I pulled all the memory out, and cleaned it, and put it back in, still no difference, only 36MB, strange.

It will boot all the way up, but I can't login (or attempt to) since nothing seems to get sent to the unit, I can only see output on the console.

I googled for details about the ethernet not working, and keyboard not detecting, apparently it's to do with fuses. I looked, and found 3 fuses. From the documentation I could find, they are for ethernet, scsi, and keyboard. I wondered if there was anything to do with the serial port, in case the TX line was effected somehow.

I pulled all three out, and tested them, 2 of them are blown, the ones from ethernet, and keyboard, only the scsi one works.

I replaced the keyboard one with a piece of wire as a test, and turned the unit on. The first thing I noticed was that the ethernet transceiver lit up, strange. The keyboard also beeped, and the lights flashed, ah, getting somewhere.

On the console it said something about "no keymap for keyboard model 21, using USA keymap".

I turned the unit off again.

I put the ethernet and scsi fuses back in (around the wrong way), and turned it on, a puff of smoke came out of somewhere, I immediately turned it off again.

I couldn't see exactly where the smoke had come from, no components looked damaged, I thought perhaps it was just arcing through dust, because power hadn't gone there for a while.

I cleaned all the dust away with a paintbrush, and powered it up again, no more smoke.

I pulled the ethernet and scsi fuses out again, tested them, both were blown now.

I put wire in the ethernet fuse socket, and turned it on. A huge amount of smoke came out of a capacitor, I turned it off again quickly. Hmm, something seriously wrong here. That explains the little puff from last time, and the one working fuse getting blown.

I put wire in the other socket, the scsi one, where the one working fuse had come from, turned it on, no smoke, started booting.

Now I'm confused. The ethernet fuse is not in there (because of the smoke), but the transceiver is powered. I shut it down, and pulled the wire out of the keyboard fuse socket, and tried again.

Now the transceiver is not getting powered. I don't know what's going on here, why would the keyboard fuse be effecting power to the ethernet port?

I put the wire back in, and left it in the scsi socket. I left the ethernet one empty, because of the smoking.

I booted the unit up, it booted all the way up.

I got the IP address it was trying to set as the default gateway.

I did a whois on that IP, and it belongs to a range assigned to a QLD Government Department, Department of Vocational Education, and Industrial Relations or something.

I setup a virtual interface on one of my linux boxes with that ip.

I tried ping scanning that subnet, to see if I could find the ip of the Sparc, I thought I found it, .125 was up, and the default gateway was .126. I port scanned .125, and found a few services running.

I tried to telnet to it, and discovered that I had just telnetted to myself, hmm. Oops.. I typoed when I put the virtual interface up. I changed it to 126.

I ping scanned again, all I can find up is myself.

Maybe the switch is blocking the stuff, or stopping me from tcpdumping properly.

I dug out an old hub, and plugged it all into that. Still no luck.

Perhaps that extra fuse is actually for ethernet, but the signal lines of the ethernet, rather than the transceiver power.

A bit after 11pm, I gave up.

I think this thing is stuffed. It doesn't detect all the memory properly, I the receive line on the serial port is stuffed, I found I can send a break by unplugging the serial terminal, and when I plug it back in again I see the boot prom prompt, but I can't type anything.

The ethernet doesn't seem to work, even though the transceiver gets powered, and the link comes on.

I give up. I'll use the keyboard and mouse on the IPX which does work, and I might just pinch the disk out of this unit, and put it in the IPX as well, since the IPX's disk's bearings are going.

Oh, the IPC has a floppy drive too, I might be able to put that in the IPX as well, not that I need it.

Other than that, it can just sit there and do nothing.

I'm not really impressed that the eBay auction said the unit had been removed from a working environment, I find that hard to believe, since:

Unit doesn't always detect memory properly, (saw lots of "memory data line test bad, try replacing Uxxx" messages).
Unit doesn't get past "testing" unless the case is open.
keyboard fuse is blown, so it can't have been used with a keyboard attached (and it came with one).
Receive line on the serial port is blown, so you can't use a terminal.

I only paid $29 for the unit, with keyboard and mouse (the keyboard/mouse go for close to that on their own) but I did pay $35 to have it couriered, I might was well have paid more for just a keyboard and mouse. Oh well.