[HN Gopher] Of Sun Ray laptops, MIPS and getting root on them
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Of Sun Ray laptops, MIPS and getting root on them
Author : zdw
Score : 82 points
Date : 2023-04-27 02:36 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (oldvcr.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (oldvcr.blogspot.com)
| msh wrote:
| I loved the sun ray thin clients. They had them at my university
| in the early 2000 and i have not seen a better thin client
| solution since.
| neilv wrote:
| Earlier, Sun made a luggable with distinctive Sun design:
| https://thegogglesdonothing.com/archives/2011/10/replacing_t...
| classichasclass wrote:
| (author) The Voyager is neat, though for obvious reasons I
| consider it a portable workstation. I still like the Solbourne
| S3000 most in that category of systems. The Voyager is pretty
| and in colour, but the S3000 has that flaring gas plasma
| display that can heat and light a room. :)
| neilv wrote:
| Photo comparisons of Solbourne and Voyager:
|
| http://www.sonic.net/~coad/s3000/index.html
|
| The orange display is classic. Is it the same tech as in that
| Toshiba laptop, and that HP luggable?
| tyingq wrote:
| There were a few with gas plasma screens. I know the
| "Compaq Portable 386" had one, and the IBM PS/2 Model P70
| and P75.
| classichasclass wrote:
| Not sure exactly which model you mean, but those might have
| been electroluminescent and the S3000 is gas plasma, so
| different display technology.
|
| In answer to the page author, yes, the S3000 had a matching
| case. Even places to store the cables and the optical mouse
| pad. A very stylish black nylon job.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Reading about Sun Ray reminds me of Bryan Cantrill's oldest
| online DTrace talk [1], particularly the story of how a GNOME 2
| stock ticker applet overloaded a Sun Ray Server, and how Bryan
| used DTrace to find the culprit.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgmA48fILq8
| sgt wrote:
| > Larry "Destroyer of Worlds" Ellison
|
| Still upset about that.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Makers of evil maniac movies will never run out of role models
| on planet Earth.
| sillywalk wrote:
| FTA: "What the Larry Ellison!"
| kotaKat wrote:
| This reminds me -- if one wanted to get back into running an old
| Sun Ray system, where the heck do you get compatible smartcards?
| classichasclass wrote:
| (author) You don't need them, strictly speaking; you can "just
| login." In fact, I only just got a set recently myself.
| However, any ISO-7816 compliant card _should_ work. The part
| number on my real Sun cards is 370-4333 (specifically
| 370-4333-03, 72835).
| kotaKat wrote:
| Does that include if I want to go back to running a full Sun
| Ray server on Linux beyond kOpenRay?
|
| (I got a stupidly good deal on a 3i that needs to sit on my
| desk.)
| classichasclass wrote:
| Yes, it worked fine just logging in with a user name and
| password to my Solaris 10 SRSS installation. No card
| necessary.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Oh, no no no no -- I want to go full-on card-mode. The
| roaming concepts are fascinating to me.
| foobarian wrote:
| Heh, didn't realize they eventually made a Sunray laptop. Since
| that site doesn't have pics here is the Wiki page with some
| pictures of the desktop thin client:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray
|
| IIRC it used some custom UDP-based protocol that worked
| astonishingly well compared to stuff running over TCP at the time
| (X, VNC, etc.)
| classichasclass wrote:
| (author) Right, Application Link Protocol/ALP. jOpenRay and my
| light "treason" fork kOpenRay are open-source
| reimplementations, though they still need a lot of work.
| getoffmyyawn wrote:
| In the middle of winter 2000, I was sent to Sun's "Super
| Training" campus in Broomfield, CO. It was a nice little campus
| and upon registration I was handed an access card that I could
| slot into any Sun Ray on the campus and access the same
| persistent desktop.
|
| There were little clusters of Sun Rays all around the campus and
| I was very impressed with the system. It was nice to have a
| personal desktop environment I could customize and use for the 2
| weeks that I was there.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| > The touch pad isn't fabulous
|
| I swear, the best part of a Mac laptop may be its unmatched touch
| pad.
|
| This is an absolutely fantastic post. Nostalgically inspiring,
| and to my reading intensely interesting even if you weren't
| previously aware of this technology. I doubt the contextual info
| could have been independently researched without having lived
| through the era. The author appears to run a gopher (!!) server
| so likely he is an old ~fart~ historian, not a young enthusiast.
|
| The website could use a modern styling update though. It would be
| much more approachable. It's not all large font size, excessive
| whitespace, and low contrast for the sake of regressing towards
| the mean of unusable mediocrity. That said, reader mode makes it
| all good.
| [deleted]
| thomasjb wrote:
| This was an extremely interesting read, especially finding out
| that perhaps the router chip is the real power onboard. Got me
| scouring ebay for old Sun hardware
| classichasclass wrote:
| (author) Hey, thanks! The 2N is Japan-only, but they turn up on
| Yahoo! Japan from time to time, though unfortunately for stupid
| money usually. I was lucky with this unit. The Gobi isn't very
| common either however.
|
| If you just want a Sun Ray laptop, the Tadpole M1400 (sometimes
| mislabeled by sellers as a Compal FT-01, since that's the OEM
| system it was derived from) is not hard to find with a little
| patience, but it's "just" a Celeron system so it's not nearly
| as interesting.
| jandrese wrote:
| That is a truly bonkers system design. I am in awe at the
| excessive complexity introduced just to reuse some obscure failed
| Sun hardware.
| dfox wrote:
| I suspect that this truly bizarre design was motivated by how
| the Sun-provided SunRay firmware could be extended without
| rewriting the thing outright (and running ALP client as an
| userspace process on a real OS as was done in later SunRay
| laptops).
| bitwize wrote:
| > False starts like NeWS aside,
|
| You've just activated Don Hopkins's trap card!
| cduzz wrote:
| I wonder if mentioning "Kibo"[1] will summon him as it did in the
| days before the endless summer?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Parry
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(page generated 2023-04-28 23:01 UTC)