sparcie

Tag: Sun Microsystems

  • SS20 Desktop: Basic Web Browsing

    Last time I looked at the relative performance of the CPU modules I have on hand, the HyperSPARC running at 90Mhz seemed to be the best option for using the machine in a workstation role. Today we begin to test this out by trying to browse the web. This sounds…

  • SS20 Desktop: Renewed Vigour

    Last time I had started to finally get to grips with the system hanging issues, having found out much of the problem came down to the SMP kernel issues related to the on-board SCSI that are still prevalent within NetBSD releases. I was fortunate that I’d been given a chance…

  • SS20 Desktop: Some minor progress

    Whilst it has been some time since the original post, I have been a busy beaver trying to get the old Sparcstation 20 running. I’ve been making an effort to get the hardware working with some mixed success, and have made much better progress with the software. The hardware is…

  • SparcStation Desktop project.

    Unfortunately I’ve been neglecting my poor old Sun hardware, mostly because of time and space constraints. I thought I’d try to go some way to correcting this by actually beginning the process of setting up the SparcStation 20 as a vintage desktop work station. I’d been planning on doing this…

  • Hardware pickups

    Recently I’ve been able to pick up some interesting hardware and I thought I’d share some photos of it with you. It was also an opportunity to try out some better lighting in the hope of getting better pictures. This unfortunately wasn’t the greatest photo due to the reflectivity of…

  • 3rd Aniversary and Work on the Sparcstation

    This weekend marks the third year I’ve been writing this blog. The first thing I wrote about was my Sparcstation 20, which I had just acquired at the time. I installed NetBSD 4.01 on it, which was reasonable then, but has become quite out of date now. So 186 posts…

  • Upgrading the SparcStation

    This weekend I was fortunate in that I finally got another mbus module for my Sparcstation 20. I was however  unfortunate in that my data drive in it has failed. Because I back up on a regular basis, nothing much was lost, just some work I had done over the…

  • ESR Meter, Logic Probe and a Sun Frame Buffer

    Recently I built two kits that I was given for my birthday. I had asked Dad for them as they will later help me diagnose and hopefully repair old computer electronics, well at least I hope so. The first kit is a simple logic probe, the second an ESR meter.…

  • Inside a Sunfire V440

    This weekend I decided to take a look inside my second Sunfire V440 to see if there was anything obvious stopping it from functioning properly. When I got the other machine running I also tested this one and unfortunately it didn’t boot. I have a key to be able to…

  • Hardware pickup: New Sparc servers!

    Now I’m not the one to normally brag about getting new hardware that I’ve acquired (I am collecting on a regular basis), but I have recently been given some hardware that just makes me giddy with excitement! A friend of a friend of mine was looking to get rid of…