SUMMARY: Can a sparcstation-10 support multiple cpu modules?

David H. Brierley (dhb@ssd.ray.com)
Fri, 09 Jan 1998 15:25:04 -0500 (EST)

Well, many thanks to the people listed below for their quick
responses and many apologies for the slow summary. The answer
to my question is: yes the sparcstation-10 can support multiple
cpu modules, but the cpu modules must be 40 mhz or above and the
boot prom must be version 2.12 or above. Once you satisfy those
restrictions it works great. There is even a dual processor
card so you actually get up to four processors in the machine.

Again, thanks to:
Pitcher, Glenn
Robert T. Clift
Jim Harmon
Eugene Kramer
Benjamin Cline
Matthew Stier
David J. Knight
<hoffman@cs.pitt.edu>
Arora, Samir
Tom Erickson
Pell Emanuelsson
Glenn Satchell - Uniq
Matt Reynolds
Birger A. Wathne
Dave Floyd
Stefan Voss
Daniel Lorenzini
D. Ellen March
Dennis Evans
Raymond F. Rodebaugh
Tim Carlson
John DiMarco

Original question:
> I have a pile of old Sparcstation-10 machines and I was trying to turn
> one of them into a half way decent server for a small project. One of
> the things that I recalled about the SS-10 is that the CPU module plugs
> into an "mbus" connector and that there are two mbus connectors in the
> machine. What I was hoping was that this meant you could plug two CPU
> modules in and turn the machine into a dual processor. I ripped apart
> a few machines, located two identical CPU boards, and attempted to plug
> them into one of the machines. The machine will not boot. I know that
> the two CPU boards are good because the machine boots with whichever of
> the two I plug in, as long as I only plug in one board.
>
> Is it just wishful thinking on my part that I could plug in two CPU's?
> Is there some jumper or something that needs to be set to enable multiple
> processors? If I can't plug in a second CPU, what the heck is the second
> mbus connector for? The only reference I could find in any of the
> documentation is a vague statement about the machine coming "equipped with
> one or more MBus modules".

-- 
David H. Brierley
Raytheon Electronic Systems - Portsmouth RI Facility
Work: dhb@ssd.ray.com       Home: dave@galaxia.com