OEM SPARCstation 2



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General Technical Information

HOSTNAME OGRE
SYSTEM CPU SUN SPARC UI 4/75 @40MHz 
CACHE (2nd, 1st D/I) 64 KB, 0 KB / 0 KB
RAM  64 MB  (Max. 64 MB)
SCSI BUS 1 x SCSI (5 MB/s)
OPTION BUS 3 x SBUS
GRAPHICS N/A
HARD DISK DRIVE 2 GB 5400 RPM Seagate Barracuda
CD-ROM DRIVE SUN 411 External
NETWORK 10 Mbit AUI
AUDIO Onboard audio chip
OS SunOS 4.1.1_U1
YEAR 1990
SPEED about 30 VAX MIPS
COMMENTS It performs like a DECstation with ULTRIX, while running SunOS 4.1.1_U1. It's OK.
ESTIMATED PRICE '90 $40,000

History and other comments

This system requires some explanation; I once came across a Siemens medical computer that was running SunOS, and I was told it was going to be scrapped. Then I got the chance to disassemble the parts and found out that the system was actually a SPARCstation 2, and it was attached to pretty big rack of boards, through some kind of extension bus. I believe that this was either GBUS (a high-end graphics bus) or some proprietary bus made by Siemens. I examined the boards in the rack and I have reasons to believe that those were: an additional FPU and two monochrome (B/W) GBUS graphics boards.

I didn't think it was worth keeping the whole rack computer because it was far to big, bigger than an SGI Onyx I guess, so I took only the mainboard, memory and disks to make a  custom  SPARCstation 2. First I modified a standard AT PSU, taken from a scrapped 386, and added a connector to fit the SPARCstation mainboard. It worked without any problems. Pinouts can be found on the web. Then I took a used ATX  enclosure and cut appropriate holes in the box, and placed the SPARCstation board in it. I also installed the back panel from the Siemens rack enclosure. Then I couldn't accept the ugly look on the el-cheapo ATX box so I painted it with some nice colors, dark blue and turquoise. 

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Last updated:  16-9-2004