Sparcstation 10

[Rory]

When I moved stuff out of my parents attic, I pulled out my Sparcstation 10. As expected, the NVRAM is dead, but a new chip has been ordered. I also just got a great deal on a pair of 125mhz Ross Hypersparc processors. Way faster than the regular 40mhz processors that it had. This was my first UNIX workstation that I have acquired back in 2000, so it has more sentimental value than my much faster SunBlade 2500 silver machine. I have to reinstall Solaris (probably Solaris 9 as I have the install media for it, I can’t find my Sparc Solaris 8 media) since I had lent the machine to my brother and he installed openbsd on it. I am also considering buying more RAM since it only has 96 megs. The machine is named “Sparky” due to a magic smoke event in the hard drive when I first got it. A friend of mine with much steadier hand than mine soldered on a new surface mount capacitor and it still runs.

 

[tokenalt]

I'd recommend Solaris 2.5.1 or 2.6. Solaris 9 is way too bloated for that machine, especially with only 96MB of ram. You can find media on archive.org.

 

[Rory]

I'd recommend Solaris 2.5.1 or 2.6. Solaris 9 is way too bloated for that machine, especially with only 96MB of ram. You can find media on archive.org.

Thanks for the heads up. I believe I have the 2.5.1 media around from my Sparcbook. That worked well with 64mb. But I may also get some more memory for it when I start to delve into this project.

 

[agentb]

You can get RAM pretty cheaply for SS10/20. It’s that SS4/5 RAM that’s more expensive. I got sticks around $8/each (?) in quantity on eBay.

 

[pkhoury]

I'd recommend Solaris 2.5.1 or 2.6. Solaris 9 is way too bloated for that machine, especially with only 96MB of ram. You can find media on archive.org.

I'm biased and always preferred Solaris 7, but it is a bit bloated. But you could at least try archive.org or elsewhere for sunfreeware compiled for 2.7. You might still get some stuff for 2.5.1, but it will eb limited.

SPARCbook CD-ROMs might work, but IIRC, there's custom packages on there for the SPARCbook (owned a 3GX back in 1998 that I got used that came with 2.3).

 

[pkhoury]

You can get RAM pretty cheaply for SS10/20. It’s that SS4/5 RAM that’s more expensive. I got sticks around $8/each (?) in quantity on eBay.

Are they 64MB by chance? I have an SS20 and discovered a bad DIMM at my club's GTG when I showed off my machine, so a bunch of us did some troubleshooting to find it. That made for an interesting demo.

 

[agentb]

Are they 64MB by chance?

yep, cheap ones I got were 64MB. Not sure what latest prices are.