[HN Gopher] Restoring a Sun SPARCstation IPX Part 3: SCSI2SD, So...
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Restoring a Sun SPARCstation IPX Part 3: SCSI2SD, Solaris Install
and Expansion
Author : rbanffy
Score : 72 points
Date : 2021-05-03 11:57 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rs-online.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rs-online.com)
| bluenose69 wrote:
| This brings back memories. Fond ones, actually. Sure, the
| machines were sluggish and limited (e.g. 32MB RAM) by today's
| standards, but they were still very useful. Somehow, the sun
| systems didn't bog down terribly with load, so they were pleasant
| to use, since you knew the limitations. And the hardware was
| lovely. I particularly remember the keyboards, which were easy to
| use and very robust.
|
| The video on this website is worth a view, especially for those
| interested in computing history.
| arethuza wrote:
| "I particularly remember the keyboards"
|
| I particularly remember "Stop A"
| bluenose69 wrote:
| I'm Canadian, so I always took that as "Stop, eh?"
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The SPARCstaton SLC (Silly Little Computer) was integrated with
| the monitor, and was meant to be an "X-Terminal Eliminator".
|
| https://shrubbery.net/~heas/sun-feh-2_1/Systems/Sun4c/CPU_St...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/16/business/low-priced-work-...
| ajross wrote:
| And like so many things with Sun in the 90's, it was way too
| late and aimed at the wrong market. X terminals became popular
| at the very end of the spinning rust era, when maintaining
| storage was a big part of the IT budget. Drives would die
| suddenly, they were hard to replace due to all the OS muckery
| required post-install, they remained very expensive relative to
| the rest of the system, they were much slower than network in
| general, and in practice half their capacity was dedicated to
| storing the same bytes of software anyway. Putting all that
| complexity into a single system with redundancy and central
| maintenance was a win.
|
| But it was ephemeral. By the mid 90's, innovation in the PC
| world had pushed storage prices way down and reliability WAY
| up. No one wanted an X terminal by 1996, they'd just grab a 486
| and put Linux on it. _This_ was the market Sun should have been
| worried about, and they were oblivious.
|
| I know this, because my very first job in 1996 handed me an X
| terminal, and I grabbed a 486 out of a closet and put Linux on
| it instead. The terminal did have a bigger display, though.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's interesting. Sun didn't have anything to compete at the
| ultra low-end. They tried to sell Amiga 3000's as entry-level
| workstations, but Commodore, which was managed by complete
| imbeciles, wasn't interested.
| jabl wrote:
| They had a x86 port of SunOS back in 1988 (to go with the
| 386I workstation). They could have sold that separately for
| clone PC's, but alas, history turned out differently.
| ajross wrote:
| In fact the 386i was a nice piece of hardware at the
| time, priced a little under where the Sun-3 68020
| machines were placed, with somewhat better performance.
| But they were launching SPARC at the same moment and this
| thing just got lost in the shuffle. It was a technically
| good product, but it was a marketing puzzle that just
| couldn't be solved.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I'd love having one of these so much... At one time I bought
| one off eBay, only for me and the seller to discover that
| shipping it to Brazil, where I was living, was ludicrously
| expensive.
|
| The seller promised to keep it for me, but that was 16 years
| ago and we lost contact. I hope it found a nice place.
| neilv wrote:
| At one site, the "tech doc" people got the SLC. I felt bad for
| them because they were running Interleaf and FrameMaker (two
| nice solid publishing tools with page layout aspects), plus our
| CAD-ish products... on a smaller screen than all the Software
| Engineers and EEs had on their adult-sized SPARCstations.
|
| We did experimentally get an IPC or IPX for one engineer. Most
| all Sun workstations up to that point were pizza boxes, but I
| recall the first IPC/IPX had arrived one afternoon. And the
| weird non-pizzabox form factor, and general curiosity about
| whatever Sun was doing next, was why three of us went back
| inside from a company social event, to watch while one person
| set it up (installed more SIMMs, etc.).
|
| Based on my recollection of who got the IPC/IPX, he was a great
| engineer, who then left software development, and now owns cool
| pubs in Portland, so maybe he really wanted a SPARCstation 2
| instead. (Just a joke; I like the IPX, and when I wanted to
| personally buy a SPARC for home, I chose an IPX.)
|
| Industrial-design-wise, Sun liked pizza boxes for workstations
| (they fit exactly under the bases of the huge CRTs, and fairly
| easy to open and get access to all the components), plus
| putting peripherals in a few form factors of what we called
| "shoeboxes" (but no longer shoebox-sized). (The 386i models had
| shoeboxes that attached atop the PC-ish minitowers.) The
| various peripherals you see stacked atop the IPX in that post
| are of the incarnation of shoeboxes that went with with latest
| pizzabox workstation chassis industrial design (3/80, 4/60,
| 4/65, 4/75, and maybe others, until the SPARCstation 10 (?)
| evolved the design a little). So the IPC and IPX looked like
| Sun was maybe thinking "Hey, we could also put the workstation
| in this peripheral form factor, and it could open in half". And
| so it seemed the lunchbox workstation was born.
|
| I wonder whether the IPC and IPX moving the floppy drive (which
| I think was hardly ever used, when we had networks, CD-ROM, and
| QIC/Exabyte/DDS) to a more prominent position-- was an accident
| of fitting things into the internals, or because the
| peripherals all had their openings on front, or to signal
| something about the market positioning/differentiation of these
| workstations.
| Diederich wrote:
| So much nostalgia; I bought and used a SPARCstation IPC in the
| early 90s, running SunOS 4.1.3, for a number of years. It felt
| like living in the future, so much productivity.
|
| Unfortunately, it was lost in a house fire a few years ago.
| fnord77 wrote:
| I used one of these for programming for a couple years.
|
| I had no idea they made an LCD screen.
|
| One memory I have of this is hauling one of these plus a massive
| sun CRT monitor on a hand truck on the NYC subway.
| cHaOs667 wrote:
| I still love the aesthetics of early 90s (Desktop) Workstations.
| Sparc Station 10, Amiga 3000/4000 etc. and this one.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| I had an Indy at home for some time back then. Now that is a
| cool looking computerinabox.
| pantulis wrote:
| They are absolutely beautiful, and the Open Windows environment
| is still gorgeous. Sadly not very useful today but for remote
| terminal sessions --and you would need a local web browser.
| pantulis wrote:
| Wondering if the X server would support running one of the
| newer Firefox builds as a remote display.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Probably because of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_Design_Inc.
| teh_klev wrote:
| The period on the end of your wikipedia article link is being
| stripped off by HN's URL parser doodah. Sticking a url
| encoded period on the end does the trick:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_Design_Inc%2E
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Hrm. Sorry. OTOH, it's sufficient to ask you "Did you mean:
| Frog Design Inc.?" and get you there whith one more click!
|
| Incredible, innit?
| teh_klev wrote:
| I saw that as well.
|
| Fixed now with a redirect. It'll probably be removed
| because of some WP:ARCHAIC_WIKIPEDIA_RULE or some such
| nonsense.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| The Apple IIc here somehow looks more futuristic than any
| present day kit
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_design_language
| spamizbad wrote:
| There was a lot of innovative design in the 90s when
| computers transitioned from being viewed as industrial-like
| equipment to friendly, humanist tools. I might just be
| getting old, but there were some really great designs in the
| 90s. Even things old PC towers like the Inwin Q500 still look
| good, despite not being the latest fashion.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Japan had some goodies, too.
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sharp_X68000_XVI.jp
| g
| TimMeade wrote:
| Wow. Memories. That was exactly the first "real" computer i
| worked on... Writing C code for engravers. 1989 or so??
| zomg wrote:
| i have one of these sitting in my basement running netbsd. i
| recently went to power it up and it appears the PSU has gone bad.
| anyone know where i could source a new PSU?
| tyingq wrote:
| You may just need to replace the capacitors:
| http://www.glitchwrks.com/2017/07/24/ipc-recap
|
| The Sun part number is SUN 300-1055, and the model number is
| APS-02 if you end up trying to find a replacement. It's a 65W
| power supply that provides +5V/9A, +12V/1.5A, and -12V/0.1A if
| you want to frankenstein a cheaper PC power supply in as
| another comment suggested.
| dsr_ wrote:
| IIRC the voltages can all be produced by a PC's ATX power
| supply, but the connectors are different. If you can't find an
| IPC or IPX on ebay, that's probably your best bet.
| CTOSian wrote:
| I would say if you can, replace it with a SFF PSU. The work is
| a bit "messy" (rewiring the ATX with the Sun connector) but no
| more cap leaking...
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Part 1: https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/restoring-a-sun-
| sparcs...
|
| Part 2: https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/restoring-a-sun-
| sparcs...
| tyingq wrote:
| They don't have quite the same iconic looking design, but a
| bargain if you have the Sparc retro bug is the Sun Blade 100/150.
| They sell on eBay for around $100-$200, and typically have a
| UltraSparc IIe 500Mhz processor and 256-512MB of RAM. They also
| support IDE, so no need for $100 of SCSI2SD.
| lukeh wrote:
| That was my main development machine (Sun had a generous
| developer discount) until customers stopped asking for Solaris
| builds.
| azalemeth wrote:
| Quasi-off-topic: I might have two SunBlade and one UltraSparc
| workstations looking for a new home in exchange for a postage
| contribution (they are based in the UK) and, if you feel so
| inclined, a contribution either to the british heart foundation
| or our research group (which is primarily funded by them).
|
| These were used as high-end workstations to drive MRI scanner
| research consoles back in "the day" - most vendors used sun unix
| at some point, before slowly transitioning to linux. They all
| have dual NICs and are well engineered, powerful machines. Drop
| me an email if interested [see my profile for details].
| rbanffy wrote:
| I'm in Ireland and would be happy to adopt one of them. You can
| reach me at my nickname here at gmail.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Compared to the PC BIOS, OpenBoot (Open Firmware, IEEE 1275) was
| quite advanced. Network booting is something that took PCs quite
| a while to get (PXE), and platform-independent drivers still
| don't exist.
|
| Apple used the system for quite a while as well.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Mitch Bradley (author of Open Firmware) also developed a
| version of it for the OLPC:
|
| http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OFW_FAQ
| icedchai wrote:
| This brings back memories. I had a SparcStation 5 at home for a
| few years, in the late 90's. It was one of my favorite machines!
| Also owned an IPC and an Ultra 10 for a while.
| throw0101a wrote:
| I always found it amusing that Sun systems were lumped in with
| other Unix vendors and called "proprietary": it used IEEE-1496
| SBus, IEEE 1275 OpenBoot, and the SPARC architecture could be
| licensed by anyone (Fujitsu, Tadpole, etc), and later CPU designs
| were released under the GPL.
| teddyh wrote:
| IIRC, OpenBoot was not called OpenBoot, nor was it open, until
| long _after_ Sun started using it. The same was the case for
| the SPARC processors; the GPL relase was the classic last-ditch
| efforts of a failing business. Sun, had they succeeded, would
| almost certainly have stayed as closed as possible.
| throw0101a wrote:
| IEEE 1275 was published in 1994 AFAICT, which was when Sun
| was still robust. Sbus/IEEE 1496 was published in 1993
| (though the first Sun's started using it in 1989). Before
| that Sun used VMEbus for their Motorola 68000-based systems.
|
| SPARC was licensed starting in the early 1990s as well:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC#SPARC_architecture_lice
| n...
|
| You could buy Tadpole's SPARC portable in 1992:
|
| * http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/32324/Tadpole-
| SPARCbo...
|
| While GPLing was late in the game, non-Sun SPARC OEMs were
| available for decades. You can still buy SPARC servers from
| Fujitsu it seems.
| rst wrote:
| Sun used open standards when they suited their purpose, but
| they also tried for proprietary lock-in. Their alternatives to
| X Windows, for instance, had licenses that weren't open in any
| real sense.
|
| And sometimes they tried to have it both ways -- licensing
| Java, for example, in ways that seemed to allow for third party
| adaptations and implementations, and then playing games with
| access to the Java TCK (the test suite) to try to prevent the
| Apache group from actually _shipping_ the alternate
| implementation they 'd developed (Apache Harmony) -- see, e.g.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Harmony#Difficulties_to...
|
| Sun was better than some of the other vendors at generating
| "open" buzz for themselves, but it wasn't really clear to me at
| the time, nor is it now, that they were better at actually
| _being_ open than, say, DEC.
| CTOSian wrote:
| Those SPARCStations are fantastic little machines, I still have
| an LX, has even a 486 SBUS card, was my main PC mid 90s for
| _years_ (I run win95 on the card)
|
| Most issues with the machine were : bad NVRAM battery, can be
| fixed by "hack" the NVRAM chip and failed (caps leaking) PSU, its
| dead easy to rewire it with a SFF PSU (alas the power button on
| the keyboard does not work to power-on the machine)
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| I've got an IPX like the linked article. 64MB RAM, 3 external
| SCSI drive enclosures. I have some SBUS cards around here for
| it.
|
| It also has the dead NVRAM battery, but I just take the
| opportunity to set my MAC to de:ad:c0:ff:ee at every cold boot
| (which isn't often these days).
|
| I have an older version of OpenBSD on it.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| I first came across those bad boys at university. Later on I had
| several generations of SPARC stations 4, 5 and 20 with 24 bit
| graphics. They were pretty nice to use and Linux had been ported
| to this architecture. Bus errors, oh the joy. Last Sun machine I
| had was an Ultrasparc Blade 2000 but finally left that behind for
| the amd64 architecture a decade ago. ARM will be next if it's
| more powerful.
| jjgreen wrote:
| There is a chapter in "Expert C Programming" by Peter van der
| Linden called "Bus Error, Take the Train", which made me laugh
| out-loud.
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(page generated 2021-05-04 23:03 UTC)