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Sun Sparc 5 Nostalgia
barl0w writes with what he calls "an awesome on-going story over at OS News about a Sun Sparc 5 coming alive again." Like the article's author points out, if you really want 64-bit computing, it's available cheaply on eBay.
...right here. They also have Ultra 60s, 80s, etc.
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Note: The article says "just about any" standard monitor with an HD15 will work -- not so. At least on the earlier Ultra 5s, you had to be somewhat choosy with your monitor.
From personal experience;
Doesn't work:
MAG DJ530
IBM G70
Does work:
Panasonic SL70i
Panasonic E70i
Panasonic S70
Sun monitors (duh)
Sony 15", 17" (can't remember model numbers).
Symptom: No display with incompatible monitor, regardless of m64 settings.
Lesson: Try the monitor with the box before you buy it.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
It's not a SPARC 5, it's an Ultra 5. The former implies 32-bit, the latter 64. Not that anyone here knows or cares.
When you say "Sparc 5" most people assume you mean "SparcStation 5"
Ultra 1s have the same motherboard as the Enterprise 150. IIRC, they are 170 MHz sun4u; SBUS, SCSI; hme on board, probably only one CPU slot.
Creator/Enterprise almost certainly indicates what video card shipped with it.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
For those people who aren't old enough to know there is a difference, the Sparc 5 was the baby brother of Sun's Sparc 20, and was a sun4m machine. The Ultra 5 discussed in the article was a much later beast, with a sun4u architecture, and crippled horribly with various PC-isms including IDE and sharp case edges.
As far as their being useless, I bought one just recently for one of my students to use as a workstation to work on visualising the results of the modelling work that will be done in the coming year. For next to no money you can pick up a decent workstation that runs Solaris, often with a fantastic monitor. Outdated, Ha!
Nihil Illegitemi Carborvndvm
The article is about an Ultra 5 being resurrected, not a traditional sparc 5. Just so we're clear, the sparc 5 was among the Sun 4m CPU class while the Ultra 5 was a Sun 4u class CPU. The Sparc 5 is a 32 bit arch while the Ultra 5 is 64 bit. The Sparc 5 uses SBUS expansion cards, MBUS CPU expansion bay, has onboard 10mbit ethernet, standard SCSI II support, and usually shipped with a CG6 8 bit color card (not always). The Ultra 5 has a built in Sun IIi CPU, 100Mbit ethernet, PCI bus support, and IDE instead of SCSI disks. It also has an onboard 8bit ATI graphics adapter.
If given the choice I would take the Sparc 5 simply for it's greater I/O bandwidth alone. Actually, give me an Ultra 1 or 2, or a Sparc 20. Frankly, the Ultra 5 was a hunk of junk even on release. I wouldn't pay a dime for one of those. JMO. --M
s/Sparc5/Ultra5
Geez, I'm dopy today. Oh, look, so is the slashdot editor.
Sparc5 - aka Sparcstation 5 - is a really old, really crappy sun4m that is suitable for use as an X terminal and not much else.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
There isn't a CPU slot as such; the single CPU is hardwired to the motherboard.
Finally, the E150 is one of the worst bits of kit every shipped by Sun; the inside is mounted in foam blocks (!?!?!!) and if you shut it down (init 5) you can only switch it back on by either (a) opening the unit up or (b) attaching a Sun keyboard and using the 'power' button.
There is a big difference between a "Sparc 5" and an "Ultra Sparc 5". Sun made a 32-bit "Sparc 5" back in the late 80's/early 90's. The "Ultra Sparc 5" is much newer, runs the 64-bit processor (That's what Ultra means) and just went end-of-life a year or two ago.
Unfortunately, you don't care enough to understand the situation. There's nothing to fix. 64-bit userland would only benefit a very very few apps (that needed more than 4GB of RAM), and would significantly slow down the rest of them. (I was actively subscribed to the debian-sparc mailing list for several years. Do some research, and talk to the sparc linux maintainers.)
I expect that this will come out in one of the promised followup articles on OSNews.
The SS5 had a built in processor.
Absolutely right; I knew that. I've got an SS5, SS10, and SS20 and simply made a mistake in my post. Whoops. --M
UltraSparc has a 64bit userland if you care to compile it. Currently the only distribution that I know of that provides one is the Aurora Linux distribution that is based off of RedHat 7.3. More information about the project is Here at the Aurora Linux website .
.
Currently its 64bit userland is limited to the C library and a few support libraries. This allows you to compile applications in 64bit mode so that they can gain the benifits of 64bit mode.
Most cases using 64bit applications cause the machine to be slower due to the doubling in the length of the addressing pointers and other factors. Better explination is available in their FAQ entry on this 64bit vs 32bit issue
The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
Not true. I've been using a Logitech TrackMan Pro for several years now, with the aid of a nifty box that converts PS/2 devices (has an input for a keyboard and for a mouse) into the Sun connector. It was a Sun part number, somewhat obscure, but definitely available and useful. It's called the "Sun Interface Converter" and the Sun part number is 595-3692. I'd recommend you go looking for one if you are having trouble coming up with Sun Keyboards & Mice or if you want to use your Sun system with a standard KVM switch (which is what I do at home).
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Both are valid names ... http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/duckvsduct. html.
Next week: Slashdot impressed when someone figures out how to use an ancient PIII/700. Yeesh.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
My home system has been running on a 70Mhz/170Mhz SS5 since '94. I have IPX's that have been in continuous service since '94/'95 as well.
Why are PC people so amazed at systems that regularly run and have a useful life of 10+ years?
The SS5 will remain a home server till I can't get replacement SCSI drives for it.
The oldest Sun I've seen working was about 15 years old and only stopped because the hard drives for it were no longer made...
Just because PC's crap out after a few years doesn't mean all computers are that way!
I hear this complaint occassionally, and I usually try to ask - have you actually tried using the app in question under Solaris 8 and had it not function somehow? Sun has always been hard-core about making sure that apps for earlier versions of Solaris continue to work on the later versions. So much so in fact, that they guarantee compatibility in writing, as long as you follow their ABI guidelines. Any app that runs on 7 that won't run on 8 is rather badly written from the get-go.
:)
As for the other questions, the CPUs pop up on eBay from time to time - try to get a 360/2 or a 440/2, they have a faster FSB. And the mozilla library dependencies ARE quite the nightmare. If you can move to Solaris 8, the dependencies at least go from being a nightmare to just a bad dream.
"I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up." -- Tom Lehrer
Actually, the two types of Ultra 1 were:-
Ultra 1 - SBus graphics, le 10Mb/s ethernet and 8bit SCSI. (As the PROM didn't say UPA bus at POST I'm not even sure if it had the full memory switch architecture.)
Ultra 1e - UPA bus Creator graphics, HappyMeal 100Mb/s ethernet and wide SCSI. During POST this machine stated UPA bus.
The 1e was only available in 170MHz versions whereas the 1 was originally available as a 150MHz version and then later 170MHz.
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"