Terry's Sparc Computer Hardware Page

In January 2001, Computerbank NSW was offered a donation of old Sun Sparc computer hardware (10's, IPx, IPX, LX & Classic) from the CSIRO in Canberra. My involvement started when I offered to go to Canberra and transport the hardware to Sydney. There then followed a workshop day where we inspected the equipment and decided on its final fate.

As none of us had any Sparc experience, an ask around produced various bits of information and this list of URL's and other bits of information is the result.

Operating Systems

We received information that this hardware can variously run Solaris 2.x, Solaris 7, Solaris 8, Linux (Red Hat 6.2, Suse 7.0? and Debian 2.2.2) and OpenBSD 2.7 and NetBSD 1.4.2.

Running Solaris

We received the following information on which Sparc hardware would run which version of Solaris.

Solaris 8 will run on Sparc 10, Sparc LX and Sparc Classic

Solaris 7 can be run on the following models; Sparc IPX and Sparc IPC, but they will not run Solaris 8.

Sparc Linux Software on The WWW

• AARNet Mirror of Debian including Sparc
• Planet Mirror Debian Potato (2.2.2) Sparc

Other Useful URLs

• Links for turning them into X terminals
• Queens University, Canada - Sunsite-
• Obsolyte - where the Antique is elyte!
• Useful Tools for Sun Workstations and Solaris
• Sun Systems Documentation
• Craig Dewick Sunshack - suppossedly Sun info, but must be out on the beach or something.
• The SUN FAQ
• The SUN Hardware FAQ parts

Spare Parts Sales

• TK Tech USA
• Craig Dewick's Sun Ripened Kernels - Sparc Parts in AU.

Sparc Linux Software on The WWW

• Planet Mirror Debian Potato (2.2.2) Sparce

The Mouse Pad

Save this as a file, the pass it through a postscript printer and you have a replacement for the Sparc mouse pad.

%!PS-Adobe-2.0
%% Sun 3 mouse pad
%% Copyright 1987, BeakSoft Inc.
%% All Rights Reserved
%% Permission is granted to copy and use this without charge 
%% as long as the copyright notices remain intact.
%%
%%

 gsave
 90 rotate
 /ZapfChancery-MediumItalic findfont 24 scalefont setfont
 5 -40 moveto
 (This is a mouse pad.  It works!) show
 ( 1987, BeakSoft Inc.)
     dup
         stringwidth pop
         10.9 72 mul
             exch sub
         dup /copyr exch def
         -40 moveto
     show
 /Symbol findfont 24 scalefont setfont
 (ã)
     dup
         stringwidth pop
         copyr exch sub
         -40 moveto
     show
 grestore

 .8 setlinewidth
 50 0 moveto
 250
     { 2.4 0 rmoveto gsave 0 11 72 mul rlineto stroke grestore } repeat

 .6 setlinewidth
 50 0 moveto
 300 { 0 2.8 rmoveto gsave 8.5 72 mul 0 rlineto stroke grestore } repeat

 showpage

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Rachael Polanski and Chris Collins for their information and URL's