Of the Love of Oldtimers - Dusting Off a Sun Fire V1280 Server

vikingpower writes "Today, I decided to acquire a refurbished Sun Fire V1280 server, with 8 CPUs. The machine will soon or may already belong to a certain history of computing. This project is not about high-performance computing, much more about lovingly dusting off and maintaining a piece of hardware considered quirky by 2013 standards. And Now the question creeps to mind: what software would Slashdotters run on such a beast, once it is upgraded to 12 procs and, say, 24 GiB of RAM ?"

Comments

A Quake2 sewer64 server

[Hsien-Ko]

and eight of them at that!!!

Re:A Quake2 sewer64 server

[epyT-R]

those where the days..

Re:A Quake2 sewer64 server

[drakaan]

One of these is what I think of when I think of legacy Sun hardware (well, I really think of E1000's, Ultra 30's and 60's, and SparcStation 5's, 10's and 20's, but those are harder to find links for these days).

Incidentally, I worked for the company linked above about 13 years ago testing and building systems...good times.

Re:A Quake2 sewer64 server

[tjones]

I still have one of those E5500's running in production.

Re:A Quake2 sewer64 server

[LizardKing]

There's an E10000 Starfire still chugging away in it's own extremely secure cage at a large data centre in East London. I always wonder what it's used for every time I wander past it to our own rather less impressive servers.

Re:A Quake2 sewer64 server

[nmr_andrew]

What does it mean that when I think of legacy Sun systems I think of the original SparcStation (Sparc 1)?

Re:A Quake2 sewer64 server

[Anonymous Coward]

LOLcats. It's the central repository.

Re:A Quake2 sewer64 server

[drakaan]

...that you're either old or you worked for the US government (directly or indirectly) or both.

I must be getting old

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't seem too long ago 8 Ultrasparcs and 12GB of RAM was the shit. It must really hurt to pull that invoice from 2005 out...

Re:I must be getting old

[rudy_wayne]

WTF?

"The Sun Fire server brand was a series of server computers introduced in 2001".

You think something from 2001 is old? What are you? 12?

Re:I must be getting old

[TWX]

Heh. My desktop PC is dual 3.2GHz Xeon based on an ASUS PC-DL Deluxe board from ten years ago. It's the most stable computer I've ever owned, even though it spends most of its time booted into Windows XP rather than Linux, and its hardware suspend mode means that when I'm not using it it's not consuming gobs of power.

The only thing that would prevent me from using a Sun like the submitter describes would be the power requirements. I probably wouldn't use the computer to its extent that justifies the power costs to run it.

The computer I'm typing this on is a Dell Latitude D410, which is eight years old. It's normally the shop computer, but works just fine for general computing. It's a lot faster than the much newer netbook, and the keyboard is loads better.

I guess I've graduated from newest/latest/greatest to just wanting computers that do what I want them to do. I get a lot of gear from local surplus dealers, as I don't feel a need to spend more money than I have to for a given result. If the Core2Duo HP in the entertainment center runs XBMC at full 1080p then it's adequate and won't be changed out until it's no longer good enough.

Re:I must be getting old

[CapeBretonBarbarian]

There is a port of open source Illumos / Opendiana that should work on this hardware :

http://opensxce.org

Solaris 11 will not work on this hardware, but sxce should work.

Re:I must be getting old

[vlpronj]

Nice to find a laptop line that's dead simple to work on and stick with it, isn't? I happened to settle on the D510, just by chance, but I've often bought a lot of 3 for one spare part, and sold 1-2 of them for a little profit, either fixed up or as discrete parts. My desktop PC at home - I just bought a 2nd Xeon 5050 processor for it. If I ever find a cooler in my bare-budget price range, it'll be a happy day. that's a Dell XPS 690 I picked up off the side of the road.

Re:I must be getting old

[somenickname]

It may not be that old but, it's definitely of nostalgic value for a lot of people. 12 cores isn't mindblowing these days but, in 2001, cramming 12 processors (not 12 cores) into a single rack mountable computer was a very impressive feat. I worked at Sun in the late 90s and I'd love to own some brand new gear from that era because, in those days, Sun was doing really impressive things with hardware in an exciting time. It's like wanting to own a muscle car. It's probably not that fast, it handles like garbage, it uses too much gas, etc. But, damn, it's cool.

Re:I must be getting old

[red crab]

I concur, this machine isn't old at all by Slashdot Unix Graybeard Users standards. What should i call my HP-UX PA-RISC B2000 workstation after reading this story; manufactured somewhere around BC?

Re:I must be getting old

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing that would prevent me from using a Sun like the submitter describes would be the power requirements. I probably wouldn't use the computer to its extent that justifies the power costs to run it.

This is the real problem with old hardware like that. In the not so distant past we had a wall of obsolete HPUX workstations, which while being decent at number crunching, were simply outclassed by new Intel machines (literally it was a wall - 3high by many wide, they stack well). I considered ways of converting them into some kind of compute farm, but they simply weren't worth the air conditioning or power required to run them (not to mention space). Power efficiency has so vastly improved in recent years that for compute tasks it just isn't worth it to keep old hardware like that running.

Re:I must be getting old

[Rockoon]

I've got post-it notes on my desk older than this thing.

Still havent called mom.

Re:I must be getting old

[Lord Kano]

Details seem to be slim.

LK

Re:I must be getting old

[Trouvist]

I've got post-it notes on my desk older than this thing. Still havent called mom.

But isn't she just upstairs?

Re:I must be getting old

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Sun Fire server brand was a series of server computers introduced in 2001".

You think something from 2001 is old? What are you? 12?

Perhaps he will park it next to his ancient Core2 Duo machine.

Re:I must be getting old

[Hechz]

Thank God, I swear I read the headline and thought didn't the Sunfire's just come out... oh yeah it has been ten years.

Re:I must be getting old

[mwvdlee]

Anybody still running a WinXP computer (I still have one) is running older stuff than this server.

This V1280 should still make an excellent webserver by today's standards. Heck, it should still be superior to a lot of current hardware.

Also, I don't quite see what's quirky about it. It's basically low-end Sun hardware without anything particularly special about it. If anything, it's the least special of all Sun hardware since it lacks the special features of it's more expensive cousins.

Re:I must be getting old

[mstrjon32]

My home server is a 12-year-old Power Mac G4 533mhz that I bought brand new in 2001. I've stuffed it with over 9TB of disks and the RAM is maxed out (at an amusing 1.5GB), but other than that it's as it was when it was new. It works better than any consumer grade off-the-shelf NAS you can buy today, and there's no reason to replace something that works just fine.

Re:I must be getting old

[White Flame]

This is the real problem with old hardware like that.

In contrast, many retro home computers take very little power. A Commodore 64 with an old inefficient linear regulator based power supply still only drew up to 15W from the wall.

Re:I must be getting old

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran a Sun Sparc 2 until 2007. Had it loaded up with 96 MB of memory. I was using it as a DNS and qmail server. It was running fine when I took it down. I just didn't want to support a 16 year old machine.

I still run a 40 year old Linn LP-12 belt-drive turntable. Not because it's "vintage". No. I run it because it's a damn good turntable and you can't buy anything better today without paying $2000 or more.

Re:I must be getting old

[CAIMLAS]

Indeed. We just got a chassis of roughly the same footprint for a customer; there is 524GB of RAM available per "blade", of which there are 6.

Honestly, I have a hard time seeing this as that old. It wasn't that long ago that 2GB of RAM was still considered a huge amount for a common server, either - not anything you'd see in a large budget environment, but certainly commonplace.

Personally, I've got equipment predating this millennium which is not only still plugged in and powered, but in actual regular use and continues to do its job just fine. The power bill from it is not as bad as one might think. And I'm not -that- old. 2001 certainly doesn't seem like something for an 'oldtimer', not unless you were already past mid-career at the time... we sysadmins have a pretty decent shelf life, vs. a programmer.

Kids these days...

(The pre-millennium system in question is a ULV-style 733MHz P3 Cely with 512MB of RAM and an 80GB IDE drive - a Compaq iPAQ desktop, a last ditch effort to remain relevant by Compaq. In all honesty, it was a good and under-appreciated effort. It's been running Debian since 2000, uninterrupted but upgraded to the latest without issues. It uses 36 watts of power under load (markedly less than a 2nd gen Atom or a Bobcat, I might add), has a parallel port and a real serial port with good port timing. It is more responsive over SSH and for basic home server silliness than either the Bobcat or Atom as well.)

A decade is a long time in computing, yes; but the modern systems we run are, in many ways, an exercise in self-perpetuation. (If it wasn't for the exponential RAM capacity we've run into along side CPU capability, there's absolutely no way we'd be offshoring half of what we are to India. Our systems wouldn't be able to run their shit code.)

Re:I must be getting old

[Nossie]

and what's the comparison of power usage compared to your maxed out G4 and a consumer grade NAS?

Re:I must be getting old

[Damouze]

I ran a Sun Sparc 2 until 2007. Had it loaded up with 96 MB of memory. I was using it as a DNS and qmail server. It was running fine when I took it down. I just didn't want to support a 16 year old machine.

I still run a 40 year old Linn LP-12 belt-drive turntable. Not because it's "vintage". No. I run it because it's a damn good turntable and you can't buy anything better today without paying $2000 or more.

Not that a brand-new LP12 is less expensive. The entry level model is priced at about $5500 if I'm not mistaken.

Re:I must be getting old

[Bert64]

Those powermac G4 actually support 2gb of ram (4x 512mb), the official spec says 1.5 because that's all OS9 could use and in those days not many people would actually have that much.

Re:I must be getting old

[unixisc]

Thanks for pointing this out. So, of the various options that would be there among the Unixes:

1. System V: OpenSXCE
2. Linux: Debian & Gentoo (sadly, Red Hat & others have dropped support for it)
3. BSD: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD (I wonder whether something like DragonFly BSD would run on this?)

But this looks like a cool setup. Just put one of the above OSs listed, and that thing can run for life, no need to bother about whether it will be supported in future or not. Also, if one is nostalgic about a past FOSS Unix, one can install any of the former distro versions that existed for it - from Red Hat going all the way back to Caldera. Although I'm not sure about the SMP support of some of them.

Re:I must be getting old

[Anne Thwacks]

Maybe then, though I doubt it - OpenBSD is your best bet now, unless you know Slowaris really well.

Re:I must be getting old

[Golden_Rider]

I concur, this machine isn't old at all by Slashdot Unix Graybeard Users standards. What should i call my HP-UX PA-RISC B2000 workstation after reading this story; manufactured somewhere around BC?

Pah B2000, newfangled crap! (looking at the HP 9000/712 in the corner)

Re:I must be getting old

[TheRaven64]

15W is still quite a lot, for what it does. A vaguely modern mobile phone or even something like a Raspberry Pi can emulate a C64 with under 1W of power draw, and will have HDMI so you can drive a TFT without having to power an ADC to generate the digital picture.

Re:I must be getting old

[Scarletdown]

Aye, if it is not from before the turn of the century (still feels weird being able to say that and remember what things were like before the turn of the century), then it is not old.

Now as for this lovely little relic on display here in my living room... Now that can be considered old.

Re:I must be getting old

[emj]

I've got post-it notes on my desk older than [10 years]

Still havent called mom.

But isn't she just upstairs?

The implication of this is very scary...

Re:I must be getting old

[blang]

I've figured out the solution to this problem. Run the server only during the winder months.
And hook it up it to a room temperature sensor.
If it gets too cold, crank up some more software, and when it gets warm enough, run it idle.
Just because the energy isn't going for the intended purpose, doesn't mean it is wasted.

Re:I must be getting old

[CB-in-Tokyo]

Do the CPU's have Virtualization Extensions...oh wait of course they don't; they are ancient!

Re:I must be getting old

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like wanting to own a muscle car. It's probably not that fast, it handles like garbage, it uses too much gas, etc. But, damn, it's cool.

Exactly.. and that's why I want my SGi Indigo 2 with dual monitors again.. it was just damned cool.. or actually hot. And fun.

Re:I must be getting old

[AmiMoJo]

The mid to late 90s were the era of brute force in computing. Many clever ideas came along - tile rendering GPUs, smart new CPU architectures, complex hardware accelerated audio DSPs. All of them lost out to just adding more megahertz, more cache, more heat and power consumption.

On the server side everything was focused on big, powerful machines instead of lots of smaller distributed ones.

It wasn't until the mid 2000s that that energy efficient computing started to matter again.

Re:I must be getting old

[Gr8Apes]

It's like wanting to own a muscle car. It's probably not that fast, it handles like garbage, it uses too much gas, etc. But, damn, it's cool.

Exactly.. and that's why I want my SGi Indigo 2 with dual monitors again.. it was just damned cool.. or actually hot. And fun.

SGI Indigo 2 - what an incredible machine, especially with that $25K+ Z-buffer graphics card addition. A near $90K machine that wasn't matched by the PC world for more than 10 years.

Re:I must be getting old

[funkboy]

A really good reason to run OpenBSD on sparc64 hardware is that the logical domain support is stable now, so you can use the processor's built-in virtualization framework: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20121214153413

Re:I must be getting old

[funkboy]

A really good reason to run OpenBSD on sparc64 hardware is that the logical domain support is stable now, so you can use the processor's built-in virtualization framework: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20121214153413

Re:I must be getting old

[necro81]

A Commodore 64 with an old inefficient linear regulator based power supply still only drew up to 15W from the wall.

Perhaps, but that C64 can be duplicated/emulated with a low-end ARM processor - with appropriate connections to a keyboard, tape drive, disk drive, monitor, etc. - on a PCB that draws maybe 1 W. The inefficiencies in the wall wart may well be greater than the power consumed by the computer.

Alternately, there are c64 emulators for iOS, Android, etc. that, in effect, give you the keyboard (albeit, usually an onscreen keyboard, though bluetooth is available, too) instant access to the entire c64 library, and a screen in a package that only draws about 2 W.

Re:I must be getting old

[ender-]

It doesn't seem too long ago 8 Ultrasparcs and 12GB of RAM was the shit. It must really hurt to pull that invoice from 2005 out...

I'm certain it would be just as painful to look at how much one has spent in power and cooling to run that monstrosity since 2005.

It's amazing how drool-worthy systems like this were once upon a time, yet now I realize they are bulky, heavy, loud, hot, power-hungry and painfully slow. I'm just glad we've gotten rid of all our legacy 'purple' Sun hardware.

I suppose it would make a nice end table next to your sofa however.

Re:I must be getting old

[tibit]

And how much power does it take to make a complete new machine? Part of the price of a new system is the cost of power needed to make all the parts :)

Re:I must be getting old

[Beetjebrak]

I have a SGI Octane sitting in the corner here which doubles very nicely as a room heater. IRIX is also stuffed to the brim with clever tweaks and ideas, so it's a bit of both I guess.

Re:I must be getting old

[TWX]

Bear in mind the cost to obtain as well.

It's the same argument made for fuel efficiency in an existing vehicle versus purchasing a new vehicle. If your existing paid-for vehicle gets 15mpg and a new vehicle with 30mpg will result in a $500/month car payment for five years, you're probably better off driving the 15mpg vehicle until it wears out. Not only will you not be spending $500/month minus half the cost of the fuel you buy (for me that would be around $100, so $400 difference) but as technology progresses, vehicles only get more and more efficient.

Same argument for computers. Run it until it doesn't do what you need anymore, either through significant mechanical breakage (admittedly unlikely in a computer outside of capacitor problems) or because new needs can't be met by it. Then make an intelligent change.

I have an Opteron board sitting in a bag. Odds are good that I won't end up using it, but that's okay. I don't need it right now, as much fun as it would be to put into something.

Obviously if one can get newer used gear cheap that does help to negate the argument, but a lot of people don't want to try used gear for whatever reason.

Re:I must be getting old

[operagost]

A consumer NAS that can handle 9 TB of storage costs $1,400.

Re:I must be getting old

[Necron69]

Heh. 'Old' was the Sparcstation IPX I had until a couple of years ago. http://www.obsolyte.com/sun_ipx/

Really old would be the 486 I first ran Linux on back in the early 90s.

These young whippersnappers don't know old. :)

Necron69

Re:I must be getting old

[Rob Riggs]

My first Unix workstation was an SGI Personal IRIS. I would never buy one. It could be emulated on my phone using a few mW of power.

Re:I must be getting old

[djh101010]

WTF?

"The Sun Fire server brand was a series of server computers introduced in 2001".

You think something from 2001 is old? What are you? 12?

Eh, it's past end of service life. Fine for a home or lab use, but, yeah, a 1280 is old. Beautiful hardware, built like a battleship. But at this point, having any of the purple generation of Sun gear in a datacenter is just a disaster recovery situation waiting to happen. So, old, certainly. Useless? Not by a far stretch. Just no longer enterprise-ready.

Re:I must be getting old

[larien]

V1280s are sun4u and don't support LDOMs.

Re:I must be getting old

[Darinbob]

I had some ultrasparcs briefly (not the high end ones described here). I was going to use them as compile servers, and I'd done some parallel builds with distcc on idle PCs and thought this would help. And it was fine for awhile actually. Not quite as fast as the PCs we were using but not slow enough to slow down my build. But then we all got new PCs (finally) and it took nearly as much time to get handle transporting the source and object files back and forth as it would have been to just compile locally. So the ultrasparcs ended up not being useful anymore. Eventually I dropped them off at Weird Stuff Warehouse.

Now to me, "oldtimer" Suns are the ones before Sparc... Sun 3/60 for example, not even a local disk drive, it booted and ran from a remote file server, even used remote server for swapping.

Re:I must be getting old

[wick3t]

The architecture of the V1280 is sun4u, not sun4v. Logical Domains are not supported on sun4u processors.

Re:I must be getting old

[arglebargle_xiv]

We're still running a Sparc 1+ on SunOS 4.1.4. The superblock on it's gone and if we shut it down there's no clear indication that we'll ever get it started again.

Oh yes: This was EOL'd about a decade before the 1280 even existed.

Re:I must be getting old

[toddestan]

Yeah, but it's kind of in that awkward period where it's old enough to no longer be common, but not sufficiently old enough that someone would consider it worth preserving. Kind of like cars from the late 80's - early 90's. If it manages to stay out of the scrap heap for another 20 years or so, then maybe people will get all nostalgic over it.

Re:I must be getting old

[mstrjon32]

The Power Mac G4 "Digital Audio" only has 3 DIMM slots, each supporting up to 512mb. The older machines (which came with the divisible by 50 processor speeds) had 4 slots, and could actually hold 2 GB even though they claimed a 1.5 maximum. Mine physically cannot accept that much memory.

Re:I must be getting old

[Kyusaku Natsume]

We decommissioned last year 2 Sunfire 15K, upgraded to 25K level except for the system controllers; they clocked around 10 years of service; very nice hardware, but, essentially, they where what a modern 12U blade server is now.

Re:I must be getting old

[smegfault]

When I built my new server I had a choice: either re-purpose an old ATX PSU I had collecting dust, or buy a new hyper-efficient PicoPSU or similar bronze/silver certified PSU. I did the math and decided I had to run the server for over 5 years 24/7 on that PicoPSU just to see any appreciable financial gain. Also, I have to justify the fact that I just can't seem to throw away anything computer related, no matter how old and obsolete it is ;-)

Good question!

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you don't want to be running Solaris because Oracle owns Solaris and you won't be able to get any patches - even security related - in any sort of reasonable time frame, if at all, for free.

So it would seem then you're down to a free unix. You might like to try the *BSD platform but it is unclear how well any of these will run on that. Linux, maybe?

Why not just use it as a space heater?

Or better yet, empty it out of all of the cards and use it as a wine rack?

Yeah, I know, that's not what you wanted to do but your problem is that Oracle has seriously made it unworthwhile to own SPARC or UltraSPARC hardware.

Re:Good question!

[Anonymous Coward]

Any of the OpenSolaris forks would run fine.

Re:Good question!

[TitusGroan8856]

I bought a sun E250 on ebay about 56 years back for £50. It is only used as a space heater in my spare room.

Re:Good question!

[unixisc]

As pointed out above, the various FOSS options for this are:

1. a) System V: OpenSXCE
2. b) Linux: Debian & Gentoo
3. c) BSD: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD

None of the BSDs above have dropped SPARC support so far. FBSD has dropped support for the Alpha and PA-RISC, since those have been discontinued, but it still supports SPARC and MIPS, and is the only BSD that supports Itanium. Of the Linuxes, only Debian and Gentoo still support SPARC - I'm unsure about Slackware. The other issue is that they'd want the OS to be an SMP OS, so one of the older ones that ran comfortably on a SunBlade 150 won't do. Which is why I was wondering whether DragonFly BSD would work. Also, Minix 2 and Amoeba ran great on SPARC based systems, and for this system, the Amoeba could well be a good fit, if it's still available.

Re:Good question!

[unixisc]

Actually, no, since all the OpenSolaris forks have been done on x86/x64 based PCs. The OpenIndiana site openly stated that they didn't currently have any SPARC ports available since they didn't have a Sun machine. So the OpenSXCE that was listed above is all that's there from the OpenSolaris family of OSs

Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a recycling center, and we sell some of our stuff we get on ebay, got a few smaller sunfires in, Debian works GREAT on SPARC machines, its still active, and everything works OOB

high end unix workstations still alive...

[Anonymous Coward]

new mac pros coming this spring!

Re:Keep it Vintage

[Princeofcups]

Like a classic car it's more interesting if it is vintage. Run vintage solaris.

You mean Solaris 8? This is not vintage. It's just one generation EOL, hardly "dusting off." It's just expensive to maintain. We threw one off the loading dock a few months back after replacing it with a M4000.

Hmm.

[smegfault]

All maxed out it might just be able to run the newest Ubuntu.

Re:Hmm.

[cheater512]

Erm I just installed Ubuntu on a crappy 2001 vintage Dell laptop and it works just fine.
I'm using it without a GUI which helps but it could handle Gnome/KDE flawlessly.

Woo 512mb ram and 802.11b wifi.

Re:Hmm.

[smegfault]

I wasn't really being serious.

Re:Hmm.

[Nossie]

it's a shame his bandwidth wont be wide enough to cope with all that communication to the mothership....

Free software.

[Anonymous Coward]

Many free software projects are not regularly tested on anything other than x86.
Make your system available for free software developers and you will be sure to have
the loag average of 30 or more. Ghostscript project, for instance, would greatly benefit
from testing on minority platforms.

Re:Free software.

[TheRaven64]

SPARC64 used to be great for that. i386 was little-endian, had loose alignment requirements, and was 32-bit. SPARCv9 was big-endian, had strict alignment requirements, and was 64-bit. If your code ran on both, it would run pretty much anywhere. Now, it's a bit less clear. MIPS32 is a pretty good alternative, and is still shipping in a fair number of machines (although mostly embedded and especially NAS type systems). Between x86-64 and MIPS32, you have the same pairings, just slightly different (32-bit, strict, big endian, vs 64-bit, loose, little endian).

seconed debian

[ghinckley68]

Its not bad hardware. Not sure core I7s would keep up with it. Not under a heavily thread server load. Single thread performance is going be a bit slow.

Find a SATA Card that will work in it toss some new drives in it and move on.
Video who knows on that its a server just hope for 80col display and everything else is a bonus.

Re:seconed debian

[Skuld-Chan]

Seriously? Even brand new sun hardware isn't as fast as an i7 in any benchmark I've seen (check spec.org).

The other thing is that Sun v1280 will drink electricity. I remember we had two of those in a data center I helped build in Portland - and even though the room was at 65 deg you could always warm up on the left hand side of those - because the worst heat imaginable poured out the vents on the side.

Re:seconed debian

[Anonymous Sniper]

as an ex field engineer, I suspect you are confused... the sides of these were solid sheet-metal, with front-to-rear ventilation.

Re:seconed debian

[puregen1us]

At the moment we're fighting to remove all the legacy Sun systems from our datacenters, and love the chance to remove these old machines.

They're rock solid, and do a great job. Our databases still run very very well on them, frequently more stabily than newer X86 kit they're being replaced with.

However:

1) Power usage is insane. The datacenter team reported the larger boxes (ie, 12U type beasts like this) use the same power as whole racks of the standard IBM/HP type pizza boxes we can replace them with. Modern Xeons are multi-cored/multi-threaded enough to compete seriously with the older SPARCs, and do a good job of it, without needing their own power station too fuel and cool them.

2) Parts are getting harder to find, and vastly more expensive. As they age the cost of supporting them sky-rockets, and with parts being harder to find if something breaks there is downtime to fix it. That's not a good situation to be in. Indivual parts for these old machines (eg. spare HBA card, etc) are now becoming as expensive as a new replacement system.

Re:seconed debian

[Skuld-Chan]

I must have been thinking about the 4500 maybe.

Re:seconed debian

[router]

Space heater?

Farm with racks of those, hot and cold aisles, cold aisles were freezing, hot aisles were sweltering. Run it opposite the LHC to balance the electricity usage.

andy

Re:seconed debian

[mattr]

Maybe send them to Quebec where I hear they have gobs of cheap hydro power?

Re:seconed debian

[MechanicJay]

Yeah, the job I just recently left, definitely still had some a few of these running in production. They were legacy systems, scheduled to be decommissioned within the next year or two...but still, not quite vintage.

My own "vintage" collection, is a mid 90's DEC 3000 running VMS 8.4, An HP ML370 G2, which runs my home network, network storage, email, and a some websites, Then there are the IBM XTs and 8-bit ataris, though they don't get much play these days.

Re:seconed debian

[tibit]

My experience with core i7 Optiplex machines running Windows 7 and CAD systems is excellent. Those systems really fly, even compared to, say, Core 2 Duo (my laptop). A Libreoffice install takes easily 5x less time than on good P4 systems we had before. I'd be very hesitant to proclaim that an i7 will not keep up with hardware from a decade ago...

Re:seconed debian

[operagost]

You have me beat. I ebayed my DEC 3000s years ago (one of them was the awesome 600S) when I finally got a "new" DS10L, which is still running my web site. It was really annoying how the feet on the 3000 would melt under the heat and smear grey goo everywhere.

Re:seconed debian

[MechanicJay]

Hmm, yes, My 3000 is sitting on cardboard to keep the goo contained. It's a 700, with the EV45+ 225 Mhz chip. I don't run it all the time as the sucker pulls 250 watts just sitting there idle. Though running the VAMP stack on it is entertaining...and a good conversation starter.

Re:seconed debian

[ak3ldama]

2) Parts are getting harder to find, and vastly more expensive. As they age the cost of supporting them sky-rockets, and with parts being harder to find if something breaks there is downtime to fix it. That's not a good situation to be in. Indivual parts for these old machines (eg. spare HBA card, etc) are now becoming as expensive as a new replacement system.

This seems like the greatest reason to not use them by an individual too. Along with hig power of course, but to still use them they need to be maintainable. As opposed to an AMD/Intel highly multi threaded box, commodity parts, lots of ram, SSD, good cheap video cards, etc, there is just way less reason to go mildly-retro. Going full retro of course has its arguments. For around $600 a person could buy a spare laptop and an SSD (or build a very nice tower) and have a low power usage, high capability box for running Linux/*BSD/*Solaris. Yet - ebay prices on these kind of things are still high. Checkout a Blade 2000 or a 2500, the prices astonish me.

Re:seconed debian

[jerk]

There seem to be a lot of us ex-Sun FE's.

Re:seconed debian

[x0]

Still confused. E4500s (all of the Es, really, except the E10K) exhausted out the back.

Re:seconed debian

[Skuld-Chan]

I had to do a sanity check because I remember a) the back of the 4000 series had no vents and b) I really do remember standing on the end of the rack warming my hands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Enterprise - lots of vents on the side of the first picture, and the back of the Enterprise 4000 - no vents.

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19095-01/ent55.srvr/805-2632-10/805-2632-10.pdf - b.9 shows the cooling module - definitely takes air in on the side.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/300-1260-03-Sun-300W-Power-Cooling-Module-P-N-PEX69031-/190681693444?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c6583bd04 - auction for a cooling module definitely shows air coming in on the side.

Re:Keep it Vintage

[mcmonkey]

This thing ain't vintage. It's just old.

Hang on to it for 10 years. Then it might be vintage.

Diamonds

[TemperedAlchemist]

Minecraft!

shutdown -h now

[blang]

global warming, man.
But if you insist on running somethnig, dtrace is a wonderful thing,
or extract all of /proc/ every minute and stick into rrd.
make 12 solaris containers all monitoring each other.

Re:shutdown -h now

[foniksonik]

Maybe he can use it for carbon credits. If he promises not to also run and/or buy a new computer for the next ten tears or so. Otherwise it's definitely going to use up energy that would not have been used.

Re:shutdown -h now

[drinkypoo]

running a new computer has a larger carbon footprint as greater energy consumption of the older box is offset by the polutants and energy required to manufacture a new low energy consumption unit.

[citation needed]

We're told that about cars. Only about 1/3 of the energy consumption is in production in their case, so a car that gets 250 MPG or similar (VW is about to bring one out that gets real-world over 100 and up to 200) makes a dramatic difference. My first Unix machine was a Sun 4/260 with power requirements similar to a dorm fridge. See where I'm going with this? I don't believe you.

Re:shutdown -h now

[FirstOne]

"running a new computer has a larger carbon footprint as greater energy consumption of the older box is offset by the polutants and energy required to manufacture a new low energy consumption unit."

Not really..While that old iron may have weighed in @100kg or more.. Equivalent CPU tech can be had for a couple of kg.. Energy used to manufacture an item is going to be based mostly on overall weight.

I've gone the exact opposite direction.. purchasing much lighter, newer energy efficient hardware. Quad core A8 based laptop + 24" lcd monitor.. Pogoplug v2 linux server+320GB usb disc. When idle my setup uses about the same energy as a CFL bulb.. (11 watts).

Along with a new refrigerator, my household now consumes just 31%(~5,000kwh/yr) of what it consumed in 2003(15,800kwh). Saving me enough after tax funds, $1620/yr (@ $0.15kwh), to buy a new laptop+andriod cell phone+server+monitor every year, if I wanted too..

Wasting energy is not a virtue, Same goes for needlessly wasting money. .

Re:huh?

[Megane]

Maybe he can turn it into a bitcoin miner.

Not that old.

[aussersterne]

I still have a Sun SparcStation 20 with 2 SM71s in my closet with SunOS on it.

Until last year, I had the IPC on an AUI adapter on a nonprofit network I manage acting as a public terminal.

And yet it's funny how even post-2000 machines have already become so obsolete as to be silly, especially in the server space.

Re:Not that old.

[DarthBart]

I want a Sparcstation ELC to run as a serial console/network admin console in my server room.

And for a while I had a Sparc20 with a pair of dual Ross Hypersparc-150s and 512MB of RAM. Stupid fast for a Sparc machine, but you could cook an egg on the chassis.

Re:Not that old.

[thogard]

I've got a few SPARCStation 20s that can replace the servers running the core business. Sure they aren't fast but they can still do the job. I think they are about 19 years old. I also have a pair of SPARCServer 1000 that could take over loads they use so much power they are only good as space heater or if I need a power supply to jump start a car. There was a time when my web site was running on a SPARCStation 1

Benchmarks

[rbprbp]

I would like to see how it stands against current CPUs. Aside from making it available for open-source projects which could benefit from testing on not-very-common architectures, I don't see much use for it either.

mind the power supplies

[mug funky]

those buggers may be redundant, but if one goes you're still up shit creek.

also, one of them went splodey in my old boss' face one time. i can't say i was too upset about it.

OS?

[CapeBretonBarbarian]

For OS I personally would stay in the Solaris realm. I'd try out the the open source Ilumos/Opendiana based distribution that Martin Bochnig has been working on :

http://opensxce.org

Speaking of labours of love, Martin's one man effort to port the open source fork of Solaris back to the SPARC platform would be a good fit.

Debian GNU/Linux - sparc64

[fak3r]

I've run Debian on Ultra 1 and Ultra 5. OpenBSD is another option, I ran it on the Ultra 5 to run as a fw for a time.

Re:Keep it Vintage

[TWX]

Like a classic car it's more interesting if it is vintage.

I can tell that you aren't into cars.

The people we bought the house from have a Studebaker Avanti with a Chevy 350 in it.

Neighbors next door have a Chevy 350 in one of their vintage Jaguars.

A friend of mine has a Dodge Dart with a Magnum 5.9L V8 with full computer control and EFI.

I have a '78 Chrysler Cordoba that's getting a bored-and-stroked 408 small block.

Some people only value stock restorations, but a lot of us place a lot of value on restomods.

Re:North Korea just set off a nuke

[blackC0pter]

Wow. Thank you for reporting that so quickly. Suddenly, the wasted heat from an old V1280 seems like nothing in comparison the global warming from a nuclear bomb test... That being said, (going back to the topic) you might want to compare your energy costs for this server vs. just buying a new server or even using EC2 time. It might not be as cool but it is slightly more practical :)

3D graphics

[jones_supa]

Use it to create some cool 3D animations. You could possibly set up the system to render using all the CPUs.

*yawn*

[pjohnson]

Not only do I still run Netra X1s (similar vintage) in production (DNS, low volume SMTP) I also take pride in using a Cobalt Raq2+ at home for DHCP and local DNS. I also have a vintage Ultra 2, Ultra 5 and Blade 100 I could dust off for work if they weren't power hogs compared to the Raq 2+.

Needs lots of power

[hawguy]

Hope you don't pay much for your electricity, fully populated and busy, that server is going to draw around 3000W of power.

With that power draw, if you're paying $0.12/KWh for electricity, it would cost around $250/month to keep it powered, not including cooling costs.

Re:Needs lots of power

[foobsr]

$0.12/KWh

I would pay $0.36/KWh in tree-hugging Euroland (Germany). Imagine.

CC.

Toss it

[Charliemopps]

The other day my company was tossing out some huge server looking thing. They said I could have it if I wanted, it was a huge disc array. It was the size of a small car. So I asked how much space that monster had... 1 Terabyte... no thanks. Some stuff should just go in the landfill.

Re:North Korea just set off a nuke

[93 Escort Wagon]

That wasn't a nuke being set off - it was just vikingpower turning that V1280 on.

can you please donate it to GNU compile farm

[decora]

they will stick Debian on it and people will use it to port free software.

they do have a sunfire but it's almost out of disk space and there are tons of people using it already.

Run Firefox

[aegl]

Don't open too many tabs with just 24 GiB

Dusting off?

[HockeyPuck]

Yeesh, and here I thought you'd have found a Sparc Center 2000 or other old sun boxes. Perhaps something that ran SunOS and not Solaris... or something newer with SBUS like an e4500...

It's not old if it has multiple cores.

Space Heater Linux

[Virtucon]

Run Space Heater Linux Distro. It will warm up the basement just fine.

Re:Space Heater Linux

[Lorens]

And the NOISE that thing must make!

Re:Space Heater Linux

[Virtucon]

Just like an old Natural Gas Furnace from the 60s or 70s. On the plus side though, it will comply with the "all electric home" principal if you live in the So. Cal Edison grid service area. With that and "Smart Metering" you'll be paying the utility company big money for the use of that space heater as well.

Re:Space Heater Linux

[Bert64]

Modern servers, especially the densely populated ones are far noisier than these older servers, which generally have large but slower spinning fans to cool them...

Obligatory

[BuypolarBear]

Find a couple more and make a Beowulf Cluster.

Re:Obligatory

[jones_supa]

Just remember that you have to craft a quite custom software setup if you want to actually do something useful with the cluster.

Re:Obligatory

[leshert]

Hi. You must be new here.

Re:Still more efficient than the x86 architecture

[blang]

I think you're forgetting how little computing power you're getting out of the sparc processors.
And the risc pipeline being highly optimized doesn't do you any good when you get 10x the speed out of a $50 intel chip.
Sparc was better in 1995.
By 1997 it was already playing catchup to everythnig else.

Antique?

[asaul]

We still have a V1280 in production (despite my best efforts to get rid of it), in fact I am sure we have an E3000 and some E450s somewhere in the place that somehow runs part of the network in a way no-one understands.

Re:Antique?

[Hechz]

The E450 was a great machine, unless you had to debug memory issues. Or needed to relicense Vertias after switching out a bad PROM.

Man that was a long time ago.

Re:Antique?

[blang]

Just beware of HW and software support cost.
Some 10 years ago, after my company had been through a few years of crazy growth, someone decided to look at cost. Turns out that more than half of our machine park, mostly leased Sun servers, and some HP, and even a couple of Compaq Alpha servers was hardly used, and maintenance cost (and leases) cost us tons of money every year, A quick project to convert all leases to purchases, and decommission everything else saved our company some $2 million per year.
The 4-5 year old leased servers made no sense, as the leases were much higher for old than new sun equipment. I think we had a an HP Superdome that alone cost some $50k a month. We also had some gifted HW where we just paid support contracts, but the support contract cost was much more than the HW was worth. Unfortunately, our company policy did not allow us to keep lab equipment off support, so we just decided to ship it all back. When it comes to IT budgets, most companies are still sadly unaware of Moore's law, and waste tons of money without ever taking a hard look at what they have and what they really need, and figuring out the most cost efficient way to get what they need. Right now it is all about grid and virtualization, but who knows how many fat grid servers are out there running untuned or redundant virtual machines, and in the end not saving any money at all.

Re:Keep it Vintage

[sootman]

Nice! Anyone can restore a car, but it takes a real man to cut one up. :-)

No emotional connection

[Weaselmancer]

I own some old stuff. An Amiga 2000, a C64, an Apple IIe, a Macintosh se/30. I maintain them because they were a part of my childhood. I have an emotional connection to these machines. Someday (I am watching) I will buy the digital microvax my old university used for their comp labs if I can. Loved that box. Spent days on it. I'll own an original Defender cabinet someday too.

I guess what I'm trying to say is why? You have no connection to this machine. You won't get nostalgic when you see it boot. Why bother?

Re:No emotional connection

[Curlsman]

Watch for various VAXen on ebay for just a couple of hundred, though sometimes comp.os.vms will have someone giving something away. Then free OpenVMS licenses and software through the Hobbyist Program, http://www.openvmshobbyist.com/news.php

Re:No emotional connection

[erice]

I own some old stuff. An Amiga 2000, a C64, an Apple IIe, a Macintosh se/30. I maintain them because they were a part of my childhood. I have an emotional connection to these machines. Someday (I am watching) I will buy the digital microvax my old university used for their comp labs if I can. Loved that box. Spent days on it. I'll own an original Defender cabinet someday too.

I guess what I'm trying to say is why? You have no connection to this machine. You won't get nostalgic when you see it boot. Why bother?

You don't actually know that. Just because the OP did not own this machine at the time does not mean he didn't use one or even just want one back then. Putting aside the obvious impracticalities, I think it would be really cool to have a Vax 11/750 at home. I have never owned one but I did lightly use one in the 80s. The important part though, is that in it's heyday, the Vax 11/750 was held up as the lusted after prototype of what desktop computers were to become.

Sparc pizza box machines from the time when RISC work stations absolutely crushed PC's in every way are also kind of cool.

That said, I have a hard time getting excited about a V1280. They come from a time when Sparc machines were already on the wane. Contemporary x86 machines were faster, although I don't know if any had 12 processors. It competed with the first 64-bit x86 machines so it didn't have that sizzle either.

Re:No emotional connection

[wideglide]

I still dream of an IBM 3081 or the 3083JX model ... or an Amdahl 5880 (not sure about the model there ...) but I don't have the space to accomodate these beasts. Or later on a IBM 3090-800 ... well those were the days ...

Re:No emotional connection

[Viol8]

>a delusion of a good time past.

Not everything in the past that is remembered as being good is a delusion. A lot of kit WAS built better a decade or 2 ago. For example you'd be lucky if a laptop built today lasts 5 years before a problem develops but I've seen plenty of old IBM/Dell/Compaq kit from the 90s still working.

Re:No emotional connection

[funkboy]

agree. we love old hardware for personal nostalgic reasons. which is why my backup MX/secondary DNS is still on a SparcStation 20 (running OpenBSD).

To the OP, I'd recommend running OpenBSD on it, as there are a lot of servers in the project that still run on Sparc boxen. Sparc64 support is top notch, and actually supports some machines that OpenSolaris (IllumOS) & Linux don't: http://www.openbsd.org/sparc64.html

Re:No emotional connection

[Hatta]

I dunno, I have a lot of old computers. I find I spend more time on the ones I didn't have back in the day, because there's more to discover. I was an NES/Genesis/PC kid. These days I play more Atari/C64/Amiga than anything else. I do play a lot of PC games, but that's largely motivated by trying out hardware I never had back then. e.g. Voodoo 2 SLI or wavetable synthesizers or fancy joysticks. Speaking of which, Descent with all three of those is still one of the finest gaming experiences available.

Re:No emotional connection

[Weaselmancer]

That's actually a really good point. I never owned a Defender cabinet but I still want one. And I'm still thinking about buying an Amiga 4000, just because of the sheer amount of geek-lust I used to direct at that machine when I was a kid. Damn but I wanted one of those. So yeah, good point.

And my "cool stuff" list is pretty lame, IMO. Nothing you can't get on ebay for a few hundred honestly.

If you can lay your hands upon a copy

[Denogh]

Solaris 8. Hell, go all out with the retro vibe and toss on iPlanet and run a web site full of animated GIFs.

In all seriousness, we run several SunFire V480s and V1280s at work. They do, in fact, have Solaris 8 iPlanet installed and we use them to run a web app and some data processing software we built in house. We're ditching them in favor of T4s pretty soon, but they've treated us pretty damned well for about 10 years.

Wasting your time, and a lot of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you can parallelise planting trees to offset the >3000 watts this draws.

Resurrecting old computers in this way makes absolutely zero sense.

Re:Wasting your time, and a lot of energy

[konohitowa]

This comment on a site that gets excited about neon glowing tubes in transparent PC cases...

I remember when I got a loaner V480 once...

[boethius]

... and the data center operator literally ran to my cabinet after I fired it up proclaiming I was now well over the 80% of the 20amp circuit I had. Ran it anyways for a couple weeks. I don't think the machine ever really served out its intended purpose - to be a burly web/database server for a product launch that never quite happened - but it was still kind of fun to play with it at the time.

Hardware Fetishist's Dilemma

[Improv]

The thing about systems is that you generally shouldn't need to think very hard to find a use for them, unless you have too many systems. You either buy systems to meet your needs, or you have standing needs that will tell you what to run on the thing.

Anyhow, the V1280 isn't an antique by any means. It was a really really nice piece of hardware when it was released, and I think that was just 3 or 4 years ago.

It gets faster.

[eWarz]

We just upgraded an 'ancient' dell 2950 from a Xeon (core architecture) 1.6 ghz to 3.2 ghz. 2 gb to 16 gb RAM...a 7 year old server that would stomp most desktop machines lights out (save for the graphics card....but then again, that's not what a server is typically for.) 15k RPM 600gb hdd...yeaaah..:D

Re:It gets faster.

[maz2331]

I use 2950s to share off ZFS-formatted storage via iSCSI... and not much else.

cc

[hcs_$reboot]

Ensure cc is installed, then you can enjoy realtime multiprocessing programming.

Power usage

[hism]

I thought about buying an old Sun or SGI box for kicks... the thing that killed it for me was that if I ran with any sort of regularity, it would be terrible power consumption. And it doesn't run anything useful to me that a newer, more efficient machine wouldn't run...

Re:Still more efficient than the x86 architecture

[kriston]

That's a good point.
Even dollar-for-dollar it was never better.

I'll adjust your statement...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Debian works GREAT on SPARC64 machines

Go try it with a real vintage sparc32 box and see where you land. Sparc32, specifically SMP, has been broken since 2.2.19, and UP support has been unstable for most of 2.4 and 2.6

I have however heard that netbsd 6.0 or 6.0.1 had sparc32 smp support fixed after all these years, but it's hearsay and not mentioned in the sparc arch changelog.

Re:I'll adjust your statement...

[Bert64]

I had a quad processor sparc32 (a sparcstation 20) running gentoo linux with no problems a couple of years back, it was definitely at least a 2.4 if not 2.6 kernel. I still have the box, and the drives with the linux install on them somewhere.

Re:I'll adjust your statement...

[TheRaven64]

Not just the SMP support. Linux does completely braindead things with the MMU. I was shocked at how much faster NetBSD was on our SPARCstation 2s. Not just benchmarks-run-faster, but users-easily-notice-the-difference speed increases. They made pretty good X terminals, the main limitation was that the framebuffers could only handle 256 colours.

8 CPU == 2150W || 12 CPU == 2900W || Max 3300W

[meehawl]

You're going to need some bigger power cords:

The Sun Fire V1280 system is supplied with four detachable power cords:
Voltage: 200 to 240 VAC
Circuit breakers - North America (4): 15A to 20A
Inrush Current: 18A after 100 microseconds
Surge Current: After 5ms brown-out short term surge is higher at 75A
Power Consumption: 3300W max

Re:8 CPU == 2150W || 12 CPU == 2900W || Max 3300W

[FaxeTheCat]

So basically what he has is a very noisy heater with some computing capacity...

Re:8 CPU == 2150W || 12 CPU == 2900W || Max 3300W

[unixisc]

Looks like it should be put in the open in Alaska, w/ a roof on top of it, and let the ambient temperatures cool it. That reminds me of the Alphaservers - they'd run really hot, and I recall the suggestions at the time of putting them in Alaska. Also, the Russians, who are not short of energy, could build computational data centers in Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon in the Sakha Republic: these places are the coldest places in the Northern Hemisphere, and could use the overheating. Heck, even though Alphas and SPARCs are more or less dead, they could build some major Itanium servers and run them there, w/ Debian or FBSD.

Re:Keep it Vintage

[NFN_NLN]

We threw one off the loading dock a few months back after replacing it with a M4000.

Domains on the M4000 are a pain in the ass... the second domain can't access internal disk. You're forced to Jumpstart and SAN boot. They should only sell the M5000 and up.

Adventr

[pbjones]

Text based games. The quake server sounds good too.

Re:Keep it Vintage

[Lord Kano]

I'm into vintage firearms. I can't tell you how many times I've seen an old WWII or WWI vintage rifle that's worth next to nothing because some Bubba went and fucked it up. Guns that would be worth a lot of money if they were un-messed with are only worth a couple hundred dollars. I assume it's the same with most classic car collectors.

LK

Oracle RDBMS, of course

[fence]

I'd run Oracle RDBMS on it, say 11.2.0.3.

Then I'd call your friendly, local, Oracle sales rep and ask for a quote for a 12 processor Oracle DB server.

Just watch out for licensing terms

[myowntrueself]

Many software licenses are based on physical CPU. With 8 CPUs that thing could cost a fair bit to legally run certain software...

Re:Just watch out for licensing terms

[unixisc]

That's probably why the OP was wanting to know about alternatives to Solaris, and why FOSS alternatives above were discussed

Use it as a heater

[SplatMan_DK]

Any software will do really. Something CPU intensive would be best but even in idle mode that server will use several orders of magnitude more power than a modern server with the same capability.

Put it in your living room and use it as a heater.

- Jesper

Spring Cleaning

[konohitowa]

You're reminding me that I haven't fired up my SPARCcenter 2000E and associated RAID cabinets in far too long.

gradual phase-out

[mcrbids]

When you run into this situation, the trick is to understand what the server actually does for end users and the answer is largely non-deterministic. So what you do is you write a network of cron jobs that take it "offline" for an hour a day, where that hour advances throughout the day.

After a week, increase the hour to 2 hours, and so on. If anybody is actually using said server, the complaints will shortly come out and you can then do a needs assessment.

When you get somewhere past 6/5 (6 hours per day, 5 days per week) you are pretty much ready to shut it down. And when you shut it down, keep it on hand "dark" for at least a year just in case.

Lastly, UPDATE YOUR FRIGGEN ADMIN LOGS because stuff like this is really a sign of gross incompetence at updating the logs.

Nothing at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

> what software would Slashdotters run on such a beast

Nothing.

I used to be a huge Sun aficionado myself. I started with a wee little SparcStation IPC (yes, those tiny boxes), worked my way up to a SparcStation 20 and beyond. Over the years I owned and ran a bunch of Ultra 60s, Ultra 80s, Blade 2000s, the server versions of each and everything up to and including a V880z and V1280 (including a few other systems like the E4500 and SparcServer 1000).

By far, the "funnest" systems I had a great time fooling around with were the Ultra 60s, 80s, and Blade 2000s. They were reasonably quiet, ran off a standard 120VAC/15A service, and were conveniently sized enough that moving them around wasn't too much of a hassle. The Blade 2000 with two XVR-1000 cards and a Sun PCI III was by far my favourite since it also ran Windows on the co-processor card (this system was my workstation for many years).

The servers were fun to assemble and fiddle with hardware wise, but a real pain in the ass when it came to software support. Most of them only worked 100% if you were running Solaris, and in some cases only a specific version of Solaris to boot. They were good for bragging rights but I never found a genuine use for them. I didn't run them nearly enough to justify their purchase. Most of the time they remained turned off, that big gear sucks up a lot of power and throws off a lot of heat and noise.

So my advice to you is this- if you're looking for a nostalgia trip, sell the V1280, or trade it for something smaller. Get a workstation- one of the Ultras or Blades and run that instead. You'll be much happier with a machine that you can actually do stuff on- be that under Solaris, or Linux, or BSD, or whatever. You won't need four people to carry the thing and you can run it off any old wall outlet.

Assuming you do get that V1280 plugged in and amped up with enough juice to boot, you're probably going to wonder why the hell you even bothered. Save yourself the time and effort and quit while you're ahead. Unless you already have a basement wired up for that kind of a beast, it's not worth it. There are better machines out there that you can run in your home office (rather then the garage or basement) then a V1280.

Re:Keep it Vintage

[maz2331]

Firearms collectors value true originality above all else, and car collectors generally value condition and are okay with restorations and even some modernizations. It's just a different domain.

Best use for it

[miroku000]

Try measuring its terminal velocity by dropping it off of a very tall building. Preferably, drop it off a building owned by Oracle.

Re:Best use for it

[andy.ruddock]

Try measuring its terminal velocity by dropping it off of a very tall building. Preferably, drop it on a building owned by Oracle.

FTFY

Re:Best use for it

[ender-]

Try measuring its terminal velocity by dropping it off of a very tall building. Preferably, drop it on Larry Ellison's head.

FTFY

FTFY

Why yes, we are a Sun/Oracle customer. How did you know?

Seriously?

[TCM]

Put it in a closet. If you have visitors, proudly show it to them. Leave it at that.

Running this thing is irresponsible.

Ha uhm.... what kind of company is this?

[decora]

If you work at a financial institituion, this is the kind of s**** that will lose millions of dollars.

There are a lot of things that only come up quarterly, or yearly, and things where the effects wont be known until months or years later.

so if someone does task X on February 15 but it doesnt show on a report until July, and then you shut it off on Feb 16th, that means it will be over a year before anyone finds out.

Re:Ha uhm.... what kind of company is this?

[mcrbids]

If you work at a financial institution and you have an undocumented process managing millions of dollars running on an unmaintained server, the problem extends much, much deeper than what to do with said undocumented, unmaintained server.

Quit, and find someplace that has some respect for its staff. The best you can accomplish in this environment is to stress yourself out beyond reason.

The years off the end of your life simply aren't worth it.

You consider that OLD?

[detain]

Thats one of the more recent sparc servers, there shouldnt be much of a problem.

My mousepad is older than this server.

[Dynedain]

My mousepad is older than this server.

Seriously, I use a mousepad from an SGI Indigo. 7 or 8 years ago I had 14 of them at my disposal. Those are old. This, this is just a waste of electricity.

duh

[dropadrop]

Back in the day I got a fully loaded Sun Enterprise 450 with 4 of the fastest CPU's, 4GB of ram and 20 SCSI disks. It had 3 NICS each with 4 sockets, 3 power supplies and even 2 fiber connections. It felt like every geeks dream come true and I had big plans on what to do with it.

Then I turned it on... The thing sounded like an aeroplane taking off. I knew it would be loud, but this thing was just ridiculous. It took up quite a lot of space, so putting it in a data-center would have been very expensive. For a while I was thinking of turning it into a table, then I just sold it off.

I guess I could have rented it to some movie production studios for use as a wind machine :)

Re:Keep it Vintage

[gl4ss]

you're confusing cool&practical with interesting.

Let it go...

[techsoldaten]

Yeah, the server may be impressive by some people's standards, but it's going to be outclassed by newer / faster machines. Just don't get too attached.

The school my daughter attended got rid of a bunch of old 486s in 2001, which I brought home to build a beowulf cluster. Networked 32 of the things into a single, massive computer with all this computing power... it was the most exciting thing I had done in a while.

It was fascinating thinking I could do such a thing, but there were all these issues: fuses started blowing / the air was so dry my lips were chapping / the power bill went up by 400 dollars that month / hardware would mysteriously die and screw up the whole cluster / there was no software support / it took up an entire room in the house / my dog kept peeing on the machines at the bottom / etc.

Still, I was able to turn it into the world's most computationally expensive, clunky web server. It was outstanding for local development, but it was impossible to get it to work with the router for external network access.

It was hard to get rid of it, the machines were in my house for 2 years until I decided to move and had to leave them behind. It's so easy to get attached to obsolete machinery because of that personal connection to it.

Seriously, give your wife a safe word for when it's time to break ties with the thing. Ultimately, it is cool, but it's either going to become an unhealthy obsession or a thing on your shelf.

Re:Let it go...

[blind biker]

Yeah, the server may be impressive by some people's standards, but it's going to be outclassed by newer / faster machines.

It is outclassed, but not its power supply: more and more of the PSUs currently in use have cheap, shitty Chinese-made capacitors that will last 6m-1year and then die. That kind of shit did not happen with old Sun gear. In fact, Sun gear used to be rock solid, like some sort of mainframe.

Re:Let it go...

[Hatta]

A complete 486 will go for over $100 on eBay. With max ram and a VLB video card, $150 easy.

Re:Let it go...

[ak3ldama]

my dog kept peeing on the machines at the bottom

At least your dog found a good use for them. They really are quite smart.

Re:Let it go...

[toddestan]

Wow, some people pay crazy amounts of money for those things now. But in 2001, a 486 was pretty much just an old computer, something like what an old Socket 478 P4 is now. Maybe I should put my 486 back together again (I gutted it a long time ago to re-use the case to house a P2 system, but I packed everything away in a box with anti-static bags and chucked it into a closet so chances are good it all still works, and I still have the P2 system so I can re-re-use the case). If I remember right, 486DX2 66, 32MB in 30-pin SIMMs, some propriety CDROM drive tied to an ISA slot, 1GB hard drive, sound card, and even a ISA NIC. Don't remember what it had for video. Ran Windows 95. Don't think I have a serial mouse around anymore for it. Hmm...

I wonder what's so interesting about a 486 in terms of retro gaming anyway? It's too fast to run most of the old games that relied on the CPU for the timing, and I would imagine most anything that targeted a 486 would run just fine on a Pentium 2 system, and Pentium 2-era hardware is much easier to work with. By the time the Deschutes chips came out, you can pretty much count on having PCI slots, boot from CD, USB ports, ATX power, plug and play (that usually works), ability to accept a reasonable amount of RAM, BIOS support for non-ancient hard drives, and other things that goes a long way towards getting something up and running.

quarterly and annual recurring runs

[girlinatrainingbra]

mod parent up! Nobody considers the problem of quarterly and annual recurring data batch runs!!! You would be totally screwed up expecting your server to be available an d it turns out to be down just because someone monitored it over a 6-8 week period which just happened to miss the beginning or end of the quarterly reports, eh?

Car analogies, ob. Dilbert

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you started the car thing... Here's yesterday's Dilbert, on the subject of restoring old hardware.

Slashdotting Google

[anchovy_chekov]

Hilarious - the google search page quoted in the article brings this slashdot page up in the first set of results. Lucky we didn't break the internet.

No , don't let it go

[Viol8]

"Yeah, the server may be impressive by some people's standards, but it's going to be outclassed by newer / faster machines."

I don't think anyone would disagree with that, but simply keeping some of these machines away from the scrap heap is a service to IT since its our heritage. Its no different to keeping vintage cars running. Sure , you wouldn't use them to go down to the supermarket every week in and even the best old V8 will be left for dead by a modern hot hatchback , but thats not the point - they represent an era we lived in an which will never come again and some parts of it need to be preserved for posterity. Imagine if all old castles had been demolished and all steam engines sent for scrap?

"Ultimately, it is cool, but it's either going to become an unhealthy obsession or a thing on your shelf."

You could say the same about someone collecting old china or silverware or paintings. There's nothing inherently wrong with just looking at something instead of using it.

Do you have a power station to go with it?

[kevingolding2001]

200–240V single phase AC, 47–63Hz, with two 11/13 Amp circuits redundant with another two on a separate grid

Re:Keep it Vintage

[Scarletdown]

This thing ain't vintage. It's just old.

Hang on to it for 10 years. Then it might be vintage.

On a site that I sell stuff on (restricted to handmade and vintage), vintage is defined as at least 20 years old. It is still going to feel strange putting up these Genesis games there soon that I picked up a while back at Goodwill. But, they are old enough to qualify, so why not?

Glory Days

[randomnote1]

I had the privilege of supporting Sun servers for a couple years out of school. They are by far the most robust pieces of hardware I've ever worked with. I remember vividly being introduced to the 1280r as it was the largest server we had in the lab. As a young and fairly inexperienced technician that thing both wowed me and scared the crap out of me. Sun's awesome old hardware prompted me to obtain a 280r, but I due to life and kids I haven't had time to do anything with it! I imagine it would do quite well as a web server or a front end to a storage "farm". But alas...time and money.

Re:Keep it Vintage

[funkboy]

OpenBSD now has mature support for sparc64 logical domains: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20121214153413

Re:Use pretty paper

[ranpel]

I think that you may be confusing the car with the driver.

Too bad it's not a T series

[drummerboybac]

Too bad it isn't a T-series. T series represents a whole different paradigm of processor and tuning for it. Having 128 simultaneous threads is pretty fun ( and maddening) to tune for. Especially when you learn how far the (effective) clock speed of each individual thread drops when you use all 128.

Re: Keep it Vintage

[drummerboybac]

You know M4000 are nearing end of their run as well, right?

Toaster Oven

[cgfsd]

Sun processors always made great toaster ovens. With 12 you should be able to bake a pizza or a nice roast. I would write a cookbook, "Putting a SPARC back into your cooking" Then I would port Android to the Sun4u platform.

to summarize...

[Anonymous Coward]

- Old computers are old.
- This computer is not so old because I am not ready to have nostalgia over it.
- A machine with so many cores and so much memory is still pretty useful, if you have something to do with it. But you don't.
- The C64 was awesome.
- Half the people in this thread are 20 somethings who pretend they knew about this system when it came out, but are really just regoogitating ( to coin a phrase )
Oooo Purple!
- The a quarter of the people in this thread are 30 somethings who didn't really give a shit about this system when it came out because it was too expensive and did not have enough beige. Purple? What are you, Apple?
- 15% of the people are 40 somethings who would never buy anything from Sun because SGI, Sequent, and IBM are the ones pushing the envelope! And Purple? What are you SGI?
- 10% of the people are 50 somethings who would never buy anything from that newcomer Sun. Digital and IBM already proved there is no market for this kind of crap. People want big iron. And Purple? What are you, Cray?

Re:Keep it Vintage

[Leroy Brown]

Yeah, but the ones in original condition would then be worth a lot less if it weren't for all the Bubbas fucking up the rest.

Re:Still more efficient than the x86 architecture

[ender-]

Ive got two Suns. A UltraSparc 10, and a Sun fire V210. Both slow, by todays standards, but they run SunOS fine. but they are going to the scrappers on Friday. SunOS 9 is just too old.

I don't know about the UltraSparc 10, but the V210 will run Solaris 10 just fine.

Actually, it would probably run Solaris 11 just fine if S11 didn't detect the hardware and refuse to install.

"Old"?

[Brian Kendig]

"Dusting off" a ten-year-old computer? Pah. Wake me when you get the latest Linux kernel running on a Mac IIfx.

Re:Keep it Vintage

[tautog]

So far, you're the only one who gets it. Take one nice example and stick it in a museum or tour the shows with it (whatever it is). Crush or upgrade the rest.

Old cars and computers are garbage, simply because the market drove manufacturers to improve their game. There might a styling or nostalgia angle to an old product's appeal, but no one wants to live with a stock Model A in today's environment. However, that same Model A with a modern drivetrain, chassis and interior provides the best of both worlds. And can be very pleasant to gaze upon...

A perfect example is when Ford bought Jaguar. They tossed all the unreliable and overly complicated crap and replaced it with production-ready hardware, while keeping most of the kitsch that people seek. Never in my life have I seen so many 10+ year old Jags still on the road (and not on the side of the road) and it's simply because there's a plain old v8 engine sitting in the front and decently-engineered technology beneath the knick-knacks.

Re:Keep it Vintage

[tautog]

Maybe we do it because Jag mechanicals are garbage?

Or is troubleshooting flaming wiring harnesses and non-existent oil pressure part of the Jag mystique?

Out of disk space?

[swb]

How do you run out of disk space in a managed computing environment anymore?

I know we're talking a non-profit entity, but they can't NFS mount a couple of terabytes of disk from another system, like an inexpensive Debian-x86 box?

Re: ELC

[bpechter]

I've got one laying in the basement. Or perhaps it's the SLC.

Runs nicely with Solaris 1.1.x (SunOS 4.1.x).

What's it worth to you...? I've got IPX's, Opus Sparcstation II clones with the SparcUP upgrades... etc.

Re:Keep it Vintage

[TWX]

Why don't the British build computers?




Because they haven't figured out how to make them leak oil yet!

You call that OLD?

[tekrat]

I have a Sun 3/160 -- 68020 Motorola CPU, VME-based cards in a steel chassis. 16MB of RAM. Two (5.25inch full-height) 150Mb SCSI HDs for a total of 300MB. Runs SunOS 4.1 -- that's NOT Solaris, but SunOS -- which was BSD based. Probably cost a small fortune when it was first built in the early 80's... And now, it's not even worth the electricity used to run it.

Obligatory

[damien_kane]

Today's, even; do I get extra points for that?

Re:Keep it Vintage

[TWX]

I did not put a Chevy 350 into a vintage Jag, and if it's any consolation, when I look at engine swaps, I want one from the same manufacturer. If I'm restoring a Plymouth, a Chrysler division vehicle, I want a Chrysler-sourced engine. If I were putting a newer engine into a Datsun D510, I'd want a modern Nissan engine. I do not like seeing roadsters pull up to car shows with the wrong engine in them.

On the other hand, a "proper engine" that requires constant adjusting of the valves, tweaking of the carburetor linkages and floats, and timing adjustments is not a good design outside of a race track, and then only if all that time and energy results in something like performance. The Japanese showed the Americans that an engine can have nonadjustable rockers, hydraulic roller cams, and even a degree of slop in the distributor and still perform excellently in most usages, ie, on the street. The car doesn't have to spend half its life apart in the garage to keep it running.

Yes, it would be anathema to put a a Chevy 350 into Morse's Mk II, but it would not be anathema to consider a newer Jag engine that doesn't require constant attention to keep it running.

Re:Keep it Vintage

[TWX]

You assume incorrectly, to a degree.

There are some cars that are valued on originality. Those are generally rare or exotic cars to start with though, not mass-produced cars. Some special models of mass-produced cars are valuable when original, but you're talking the '70 Challenger Convertible with the factory numbers matching 426 HEMI in it, which if looked at in total, only ten Challengers were optioned that way.

The biggest thing that I as an auto enthusiast care about is the driving experience. My '78 Chrysler Cordoba was a DOG when I bought it. When it's back together it'll be a BEAST. Dad's Charger and Barracuda are now a lot more fun to drive.

By contrast, my '95 Impala SS, my daily driver, won't get changes unless they're safety oriented. I'm probably going to do some suspension changes since it wallows like a porpoise in the corners. But, it doesn't need engine changes, plenty of power. Certainly its appearance is going to remain unchanged.

Re:Keep it Vintage

[TWX]

On the other hand, how many vintage cars would have been junked out when their original engines could no longer be cost-effectively serviced?

Re:Keep it Vintage

[mcmonkey]

On a site that I sell stuff on (restricted to handmade and vintage), vintage is defined as at least 20 years old. It is still going to feel strange putting up these Genesis games there soon that I picked up a while back at Goodwill. But, they are old enough to qualify, so why not?

IANAEIA (I am not an expert in antiquities) but, the definition of "antique" will depend on what the thing is. Generally, the things the change and get old fast, become antiques fast. This server is about 10~12 years old. As another poster noted, the contemporary OS is only one version past EOL.

Cell phones--with a new generation coming out every 6 or 9 months--might be antique at 10 years. Game systems--with a new generation every few years, but with large leaps in capabilities between generations--might be antique at 20 years. So the PS1, XBox, Dreamcast are old. NES, Intellivision, Coleco are antique. Genesis is right along that line, as production went in to the late 1990s. I wouldn't criticize you for labeling Genesis games or console antique, but again, I am not an expert.

Servers (in my mind) have a similar timeline. 10 years past release is old. 20 years is antique. While Subby is running this server as an historical demonstration, there are certainly business running the same model for daily operations.

These gray areas exist because we don't have a mature market for these devices (as far as I know). Consider the collectible car market, which has strict and generally accepted benchmarks for what qualifies as antique. A 20-yr old car wouldn't be considered antique. According to Wikipedia, the Antique Automobile Club of America puts that line at 45 years.

Google searches for "Antique Server Club of America" and "Antique Video Game Club of America" didn't return any useful results, so we're on our own to decide what constitutes antique. But it will always be relative. A 50-yr old house is practically new. A 50-yr old piece of furniture is old. A 50-yr old car is antique. A 50-yr old computer is historical.

Not dead yet..

[h8sg8s]

A good number of Communications Service Providers (CSPs) still use these for HLR functionality, so you may be occasionally using one without knowing it. Likewise, Verizon FIOS uses them to manage the Network Elements in the FIOS distribution network. Old? Yes. Useless? Not quite yet - despite Oracle's "embrace" of Solaris licensing and Sparc. Kind of like a boa embraces a rabbit..

OpenBSD support for multiprocessing?

[unixisc]

How is OpenBSD in terms of support for multiprocessing setups?

Re: ELC

[x0]

I had an IPX with a Weitek PowerUP way back when. Interesting machines back in the day. I replaced the IPX with a SS20 with SM51s when Comdisco went tits up.

It's not quite that simple

[decora]

If you google "Gnu Compile Farm". You can see all the 'inexpensive' boxes they have had donated that went down or had their hosting disappear.

I don't know what their finances are like, but they depend on donated hosting, donated hardware, and donated sysadmin work. Security obviously complicates this - you can't just let anyone who applies be a sysadmin. Hardware from AMD, Intel, IBM, hosting mostly from French groups, and Oregon State. Their Sparc machines are mostly in France.

I spoke soon about the lack of disk space, they recently freed 30GB on their big Sunfire machine. However, they have dozens of people using these things so you can imagine if 4 people try to build some huge project at the same time you can easily run out of space pretty quick.

its obvious if you just talk to the users

[decora]

it all comes down to a basic ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes, to imagine what their job is like and etc etc. sometimes that can only be obtained by experience, other times by just listening to people...

ha ha ha

[decora]

oh my. that was a good joke my friend!

I have a SparcServer 1000 at home...

[Askmum]

...you can touch me now.

dude, dump it...

[NikeHerc]

Seriously, dump the v1280. If my memory is correct, it becomes "end of service life" this month. That means no replacement parts or o.s. upgrades from Oracle. The last time the admins tried to patch the v1280 where I work (> 2 years ago), after patching failed miserably, they discovered the Solaris maintainers were no longer worrying about the v1280 hardware.

If you're lucky, a third party will buy it from you for parts.

Get a fast, cheap Linux box and forget the v1280.

Why would you want that old thing in your home?

[SteveyP66]

We've gone through an extensive consolidation project that threw out V880s/V440s and other older Sun equipment, in preference to M5000, M4000, and M3000. The power draw difference is huge - especially when you compare the fact you can run several V880 apps on a single M5000! They are also noisy. So unless you intend switching off your central heating in summer and wearing earplugs, why would you want one of these in your home? Run a VM on your PC instead.