Sparcstation 1+
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The SPARCstation 1+, or Sun 4/65, is a SPARC-based computer workstation sold by Sun Microsystems as part of the SPARCstation series. It was sold starting in April 1989, and the end of Sun's support for it was originally 1996, but support was extended to 31 May 1999. A workstation, the computer was designed for ease of production with heavy integration in a distinctive slim enclosure (a square 3 inch high "pizza box"). It was designed to compete in the market with high-end PCs or Macs and sold for between $8,995 (no hard disks) and around $20,000.
The computer was based around a LSI Logic L64801 RISC CPU running at 25 MHz, with a Weitek 3172 FPU coprocessor. It was an upgrade to the SPARCStation 1. It was the second of the sun4c architecture. The motherboard offered three SBus slots and had built-in AUI ethernet, 8 kHz audio, and a fast-narrow (4 MiB/s) SCSI bus. The basic display ran at 1152x900 in 256 colours, and monitors shipped with the computer were 16 to 19 inch greyscale or colour.
Contents |
[edit] Ports
- 3x SBUS slots (Internal)
- 1x AUI ethernet connection.
- 1x SUN custom audio connection for the 8kHz audio and microphone.
- 1x SUN keyboard connection.
- 2x DSUB25 RS232 connections.
- 1x fast-narrow HD SCSI connector.
[edit] Memory
The SPARCstation 1+ takes 30 pin SIMMs in groups of four. It can take either 1 MB or 4 MB SIMMs as long as the size is consistent within a bank. There are a total of four memory banks, which can give a total of 64 MB of memory. The memory bank nearest the floppy disk drive should be filled first. If not, the OpenBoot firmware will hang while memory checking.
[edit] Disk drives
The SPARCstation 1 has space for up to two hard drives and one floppy drive internally. The machine will take any 50 pin SCSI-2 hard drive, but the OpenBoot BIOS will not boot from any partition which starts or ends after 1024 MB. The floppy drive, like the Macintosh's, is unusual in that it has an electromechanical eject mechanism rather than the conventional eject button, and therefore must be ejected by the operating system or OpenBoot. The machine can connect to any SCSI CD drive, via either the SCSI connector on the back or by connecting it to any spare internal SCSI connector via a 50 pin cable.
[edit] My one
My Sparcstation I+ has 40Mb of ram, 1Gb hard drives, a CG3 and a floppy drive. It has NetBSD installed on it. I have hacked the CMOS ram chip to replace the battery.
[edit] NVRAM
The SPARCstation 1 uses a M48T02 Battery backed up RTC with RAM chip, which handles the real time clock and the Openboot BIOS parameter storage. The only problem with this chip is that the battery is internal, which means you have to replace the whole chip when the battery runs out. As Sparcstation 1's are now older than the battery lives of the chip, a substantial number of these boxes will now refuse to boot.
[edit] Operating systems
The SPARCstation 1, 1+, IPC and SLC can run the following operating systems:
SunOS 4.0.3c through 5.7 (Solaris 7)
Linux (Modern versions may have trouble with the limited amount of memory in these machines)
NetBSD 1.0 onwards
OpenBSD - All versions.
[edit] Related computers i have
The SPARCstation 1 (Sun 4/60) Was the previous model.
The SPARCstation IPC (Sun 4/40) is a version of the SPARCstation 1+ in a lunchbox style case and onboard video.
The SPARCstation 2 (Sun 4/75) is the machine's successor and was released in 1990.
