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Sun Sparc 5 Nostalgia

Posted by timothy on from the perfectly-good-electricity dept.

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.

4 of 363 comments (clear)

  1. You can purchase an Ultra 5... by tcopeland · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...right here. They also have Ultra 60s, 80s, etc.

    --
    The Army reading list
  2. Monitors on Sparc5 by multipartmixed · · Score: 5, Informative

    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()?
  3. Correction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Sparc 5 isn't an Ultra 5 by the+packrat · · Score: 5, Informative

    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 Outdated, Ha!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