Sun SPARCStation 20

[~misfit~]

I have been given one of the above. No box, just mobo (on tray), PSU, 128MB
RAM, CPU (with 1MB cache) and am told it works.

Yeah, like I know anything about these things! I'd like to get it going. The
guy who (very kindly) posted it to me is unavailable at the moment, out of
the country on business. I've been driving myself batty all night playing
with it, following his instructions (using a serial cable/terminal client to
monitor it from Windows), I have no monitor, keyboard etc. for it.

I can find virtually nothing of use on the net about it. Sun's site isn't
that helpful, I've downloaded the manual but I really need a technician's
manual, not a users manual. The only usenet groups I can see are more about
porting Linux for it, not about hardware. I'm sure these guys don't have a
mobo and various SCSI drives/PSU/etc spread all over their test bench.

Anyone have any ideas about where I can find out what I need to know to get
it running, even posting? He'll be back in a while and will no doubt help me
but I've just spent hours messing with this thing and am impatient.

Thank you.

 

[Hippy Paul]

I have been given one of the above. No box, just mobo (on tray), PSU, 128MB
RAM, CPU (with 1MB cache) and am told it works.

Yeah, like I know anything about these things! I'd like to get it going. The
guy who (very kindly) posted it to me is unavailable at the moment, out of
the country on business. I've been driving myself batty all night playing
with it, following his instructions (using a serial cable/terminal client to
monitor it from Windows), I have no monitor, keyboard etc. for it.

I can find virtually nothing of use on the net about it. Sun's site isn't
that helpful, I've downloaded the manual but I really need a technician's
manual, not a users manual. The only usenet groups I can see are more about
porting Linux for it, not about hardware. I'm sure these guys don't have a
mobo and various SCSI drives/PSU/etc spread all over their test bench.

Anyone have any ideas about where I can find out what I need to know to get
it running, even posting? He'll be back in a while and will no doubt help me
but I've just spent hours messing with this thing and am impatient.

Thank you.

Sun it seems do not give out much info as they require you to have mega
expensive service contracts; software lease; hardware lease etc - and they
will take care of it all - for a large sum of money.

Don't know if this is still relevant, but I had a sun sparc (i386) quite a
few years ago - everything was custom made by sun - even things like the
keyboard (with mouse attachment - ala Mac) seemed unique and a *requirement*
to get it to post - and the only thing it would run was the Sun OS (we are
pre-linux here) - though it had a dedicated 8186 cpu (yes 8186) to run
Windows 2.0 on once inside the OS. I had the full set of manuals - the
technician's manual was fairly crap not that much differerence to the user
manual - just telling you how to configure the OS nothing much about
hardware - it seems if something goes wrong with the hardware - call Sun...

not much help I know.

 

[Juhan Leemet]

Sparc20s are really nice machines. Nice case, too. Too bad you didn't get
one. No reason it won't work on a bench, though. Probably spewing EMI.
When you get to read the startup messages on the serial console, it should
tell you which CPU speed you have. An SM71 (75MHz) SuperSPARC is quite
respectable for these machines. Higher speed Ross CPUs are more rare. You
can put 2 CPUs (even 4 if you use dual Ross modules) to play with SMP.


Sun machines will run very happily "headless" (without screen) and without
keyboards, etc. They were designed right from the beginning as servers.


There are technical manuals, too. You just have to dig a bit. Did you get
this service manual (266 pages of .pdf goodness!)?

http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/pdf/801-6189-12.pdf

BTW, it took me only a couple of minutes to find that on the Sun site.


Not the comp.sys.sun.* groups. There are some Linux related posts there,
but generally these are knowledgeable Sun sysadmins and users, and wizards
(some who work for Sun) who use and admin Solaris. I would advise lurking
a bit, to get the tone of these groups, read some FAQs, and don't annoy
them too much. There are helpful people there, but they do expect people
to at least try to RTFM. The machines are not that difficult, really.


You could alto try posting to comp.sys.syn.hardware and look in
comp.sys.sun.wanted if you want to buy/sell any Sun gear.

Sun it seems do not give out much info as they require you to have mega
expensive service contracts; software lease; hardware lease etc - and
they will take care of it all - for a large sum of money.

Yes, you can do that, but there are many people that run Sun machines on
their own. I have several Sun machines, including a couple of Sparc20s
(but I don't run those much any more). No service contracts here. I
generally find more quality information on Sun stuff than for PCs. Sun
architecture and designs seem more coherent and stable. One design shop.

To start with: connect your (virtual) terminal to the serial port at the
back of the Sparc20, and set it up for 9600 baud (no parity, I believe,
but I don't think that matters so much?). Then when you power up, you
should see some messages coming out there, typically identifying CPU(s)
and amount of memory, etc. When the POST sequence is finished, depending
on what has been set in its OBP (Open Boot Prom) it might try to boot, or
go to an "ok" prompt, waiting for commands (diagnostics, etc.). If you get
to "ok" and you think you have a bootable system on disk, try typing in
"boot" (it should default to disk).

Do you have a SCSI CD drive for it? Needs 512byte sector jumper, I think.

BTW, something that might seem confusing: for "hysterical" 8^) reasons,
the Sun4m (also Sun3?) architecture (includes Sparc20) boots from the 3rd
SCSI ID (lower drive?) and the other one is 1st SCSI ID. I believe that
was done for compatibility with some outboard gear. Can be confusing.

What O/S are you trying to run?

BTW, Sparc20 will run Solaris9, albeit a bit slow. If you don't use any
GUI window manager, it should be quite usable, and fun. Makes a nice NFS
server. My main NFS server was a Sparc20, until I replaced it with Ultra2.

Don't know if this is still relevant, but I had a sun sparc (i386) quite
a few years ago - everything was custom made by sun - even things like
the keyboard (with mouse attachment - ala Mac) seemed unique and a
*requirement* to get it to post - and the only thing it would run was
the Sun OS (we are pre-linux here) - though it had a dedicated 8186 cpu
(yes 8186) to run Windows 2.0 on once inside the OS. I had the full set
of manuals - the technician's manual was fairly crap not that much
differerence to the user manual - just telling you how to configure the
OS nothing much about hardware - it seems if something goes wrong with
the hardware - call Sun...

I've seen the i386 machines. At one point, I would have been interested in
playing with them, but time has passed them by. I don't think they ever
really developed a market niche for them. Sun seem also rather ambivalent
about Solaris for ix86. Some Sun users hate Linux. Most tolerate it. I
love Linux, but I admit that I love Solaris more. Call me fickle.

 

[~misfit~]

Sparc20s are really nice machines. Nice case, too. Too bad you didn't
get one. No reason it won't work on a bench, though. Probably spewing
EMI. When you get to read the startup messages on the serial console,
it should tell you which CPU speed you have. An SM71 (75MHz)
SuperSPARC is quite respectable for these machines. Higher speed Ross
CPUs are more rare. You can put 2 CPUs (even 4 if you use dual Ross
modules) to play with SMP.

I'm told it's a 75Mhz CPU.

Sun machines will run very happily "headless" (without screen) and
without keyboards, etc. They were designed right from the beginning
as servers.

That was what the guy who gave it to me told me too.

There are technical manuals, too. You just have to dig a bit. Did you
get this service manual (266 pages of .pdf goodness!)?

http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/pdf/801-6189-12.pdf

BTW, it took me only a couple of minutes to find that on the Sun site.

Yeah, I have that. Thanks.

Not the comp.sys.sun.* groups. There are some Linux related posts
there, but generally these are knowledgeable Sun sysadmins and users,
and wizards (some who work for Sun) who use and admin Solaris. I
would advise lurking a bit, to get the tone of these groups, read
some FAQs, and don't annoy them too much. There are helpful people
there, but they do expect people to at least try to RTFM. The
machines are not that difficult, really.

I'll look inot these groups, if my ISP carries tham that is. Otherwise I

You could alto try posting to comp.sys.syn.hardware and look in
comp.sys.sun.wanted if you want to buy/sell any Sun gear.
Cheers.


Yes, you can do that, but there are many people that run Sun machines
on their own. I have several Sun machines, including a couple of
Sparc20s (but I don't run those much any more). No service contracts
here. I generally find more quality information on Sun stuff than for
PCs. Sun architecture and designs seem more coherent and stable. One
design shop.

To start with: connect your (virtual) terminal to the serial port at
the back of the Sparc20, and set it up for 9600 baud (no parity, I
believe, but I don't think that matters so much?). Then when you
power up, you should see some messages coming out there, typically
identifying CPU(s) and amount of memory, etc. When the POST sequence
is finished, depending on what has been set in its OBP (Open Boot
Prom) it might try to boot, or go to an "ok" prompt, waiting for
commands (diagnostics, etc.). If you get to "ok" and you think you
have a bootable system on disk, try typing in "boot" (it should
default to disk).

I don't get anything when I attempt to power it up. Zilch, not even PSU fans
spinning. I think I have a hardware problem somewhere, probably the way I
have it all connected up.

Do you have a SCSI CD drive for it? Needs 512byte sector jumper, I
think.

I have a SCSI CDROM I intend to use with it. I din't know anything about the
512byte thing though and don't think the drive has it. It's an NEC CDR-1910A
and the only jumpers it has, other than SCSI address ones, are two
'reserved, factory use only' and one for termination.

BTW, something that might seem confusing: for "hysterical" 8^)
reasons, the Sun4m (also Sun3?) architecture (includes Sparc20) boots
from the 3rd SCSI ID (lower drive?) and the other one is 1st SCSI ID.
I believe that was done for compatibility with some outboard gear.
Can be confusing.
Ok.

What O/S are you trying to run?

I have been given both Solaris 9.0 and Debian SPARC 3.0r1 on CDR. HDD space
is the problem though, the machine only supports up to 2GB drives and I'm
told I need close to 8GB for Solaris 9.

BTW, Sparc20 will run Solaris9, albeit a bit slow. If you don't use
any GUI window manager, it should be quite usable, and fun. Makes a
nice NFS server. My main NFS server was a Sparc20, until I replaced
it with Ultra2.

'Scuse my ignorance, NFS?

Thanks for your input.

 

[Hippy Paul]

On Sat, 26 Jun 2004 12:02:58 +0000, Hippy Paul wrote:



Yes, you can do that, but there are many people that run Sun machines on
their own. I have several Sun machines, including a couple of Sparc20s
(but I don't run those much any more). No service contracts here. I
generally find more quality information on Sun stuff than for PCs. Sun
architecture and designs seem more coherent and stable. One design shop.

yeah I suppose I was harking back way too far - the web did not exist in its
current form then - no such things as ISPs. But no denying Sun is good kit

I've seen the i386 machines. At one point, I would have been interested in
playing with them, but time has passed them by. I don't think they ever
really developed a market niche for them. Sun seem also rather ambivalent
about Solaris for ix86. Some Sun users hate Linux. Most tolerate it. I
love Linux, but I admit that I love Solaris more. Call me fickle.

No denying time has passed them by, I cannabalised mine for its scsi
peripherals about 8 years ago. My experience at the time was that this
particular i386 series failed because of its 8186 - when the change to
windows 3.0 happend it could not run it - as it required the 8286
instruction set - that's how I ended up with it.

 

[Juhan Leemet]

I'm told it's a 75Mhz CPU.

I think that was the "sweet spot" for performance. Once you get this
machine going, you might be able to find another SM71 on eBay for $10.
That would be well worth it, as you will notice the difference. You'll be
able to play with SMP also and threads, etc., if you're interested.

Forgot to mention that you need a null modem cable.

I don't get anything when I attempt to power it up. Zilch, not even PSU
fans spinning. I think I have a hardware problem somewhere, probably the
way I have it all connected up.

That's not right. These power supplies do need a load and a connection to
the mobo. They are like the most recent PC mobos, in that they have
software controllable poweroff. PSU might not work on a bench without any
load or mobo. I don't think I've ever had that problem on a Sparc20.

er, you did toggle the power switch up (towards the 1 position)? That's
pretty obvious, but what might not be so obvious is that the toggle switch
springs right back. It is sort of a kick start, and once power gets to the
mobo, mobo keeps the PSU going, until you decide to power off (HW or SW).

I have a SCSI CDROM I intend to use with it. I din't know anything about
the 512byte thing though and don't think the drive has it. It's an NEC
CDR-1910A and the only jumpers it has, other than SCSI address ones, are
two 'reserved, factory use only' and one for termination.

That might cause you some problem. IIRC, the Sparc20 won't boot off a PC
SCSI CD drive (2048 byte blocks) and MUST have 512 byte blocks. I have
seen Toshiba CDs (for Sun and for DEC) which work. You might be lucky. The
worst that would happen is you would see it go to start loading from CD,
the LED on the drive would flash a few times, and it would sit there...

I have been given both Solaris 9.0 and Debian SPARC 3.0r1 on CDR. HDD
space is the problem though, the machine only supports up to 2GB drives
and I'm told I need close to 8GB for Solaris 9.

I would start with Solaris9. The basic install only takes a bit more than
1G IIRC? or 2G? Initially you don't need all the optional stuff like
Gnome, KDE, etc. If you're connecting on serial, you don't even need CDE
(Sun's favorite window manager) but it might be more trouble to leave off.

The only reason the documents say that Sparc20s only support 2GB drives is
that was the only thing available at the time they were manufactured.
These are standard SCSI SCA (80-pin, hot swap actually) connector drives.
I have 2 x 9GB drives in my 2 Sparc20s. Works great. I've heard of people
putting in bigger ones. Heat can be a problem, so old drives aren't as
good as newer ones, and don't go for the 10Krpm or 15Krpm, since they
generate much more heat. A couple of IBM or Fujitsu 9GB 7200rpm drives
would work great in there. Others have said the same. Do you have disk?

BTW, there's an add-on fan that went behind disk drives, to help cool them.

Oh, I keep forgetting that you have no case. Keep an eye on the CPUs and
disks, maybe checking their temperature (with a finger? if you can only
stand 10sec then they're 50degrees C!). You might have to fashion some air
flow baffles, or use some additional fans to keep that stuff cool.

'Scuse my ignorance, NFS?

NFS = Network File System. That was a Sun development which allows servers
to share file systems, which can be mounted on workstations (or other
servers). Stateless protocol (which is interesting) so it's simpler than
some of the other file sharing schemes. Been working great for 20+ years!
It's become the favorite file sharing system for *nix, including Linux.

BTW, it will also run Samba quite well, for SMB shares to Windoze machines.

Thanks for your input.

Good luck!

 

[Juhan Leemet]

No denying time has passed them by, I cannabalised mine for its scsi
peripherals about 8 years ago. My experience at the time was that this
particular i386 series failed because of its 8186 - when the change to
windows 3.0 happend it could not run it - as it required the 8286
instruction set - that's how I ended up with it.

I thought they had a 25MHz i386 in there? Did you also have a co-processor
to run Windoze? I had a 486 SBUS board that went into a Sparc-1 (about
similar CPU power?). It ran DOS or Windoze 3.x, but it was really slow! I
suppose the miracle was that it worked at all?

 

[Hippy Paul]

I thought they had a 25MHz i386 in there? Did you also have a co-processor
to run Windoze? I had a 486 SBUS board that went into a Sparc-1 (about
similar CPU power?). It ran DOS or Windoze 3.x, but it was really slow! I
suppose the miracle was that it worked at all?

You are right the main processor was a 25mhz i386 dx, but windows was run on
a dedicated 8186 processor (had to run it from inside the SunOS though,
could not boot straight into it) - was the only application of an i8186 I
ever encountered.
It is painfully slow by todays standards, but it had its day - at the time
my other machine was an 8088 running GEM and DOS - so it was a monster in
comparison.

 

[Michael Brown]

You are right the main processor was a 25mhz i386 dx, but windows was
run on a dedicated 8186 processor (had to run it from inside the
SunOS though, could not boot straight into it) - was the only
application of an i8186 I ever encountered.

I think you mean the 80186. It was designed as an embedded processor
(developed more-or-less independantly from the 80286 which came out at about
the same time), and never intended to be used in a "normal" computer. It had
a lot of stuff built in to it (DMA controller, PIC, etc) that usually
resided in the support chips, but because of this (and other things) it was
impossible to make an "IBM compatible" computer using the 80186. I'm
surprised Windows ran on it, though I'm pretty sure a customised 1.0 ran on
the Tandy 2000 (also 186-based). Quite possibly Sun payed MS a few bucks to
make it work.

The 80186 was popular for a short time, as it ran much quicker (due to
architectual and raw mhz increases) than the 8086/8088 chips. However, once
PC compatibility became a "must", which occured not long after the release
of the 80186, the demand for it dropped off and it became used in the way it
was originally intended (handhelds, addin cards, etc).

My personal interest in the 80186 is because I own a Phillips :YES computer,
which also was 80186 based (and hence flopped due to not being IBM
compatible). It's a beautiful computer, and doesn't have a single fan in it,
even for the PSU. The case is a giant heatsink. It comes along with an
ultra-quiet keyboard that slides in under the front, and a yellow-on-black
screen that makes a buzzing noise (the loudest part of the computer). Oh, if
only this still were possible ...

[...]

 

[Hippy Paul]

I think you mean the 80186.

yes you are right, I was being lazy (forgetful) and dropping the zero it was
an i80186.

It was designed as an embedded processor

(developed more-or-less independantly from the 80286 which came out at about
the same time), and never intended to be used in a "normal" computer. It had
a lot of stuff built in to it (DMA controller, PIC, etc) that usually
resided in the support chips, but because of this (and other things) it was
impossible to make an "IBM compatible" computer using the 80186. I'm
surprised Windows ran on it, though I'm pretty sure a customised 1.0 ran on
the Tandy 2000 (also 186-based). Quite possibly Sun payed MS a few bucks to
make it work.

Not sure how they did it, could have been hardware, or via the SunOS, or
both as windows was run inside the SunOS and would not work as a stand
alone.

 

[P2B]

I have been given one of the above. No box, just mobo (on tray), PSU, 128MB
RAM, CPU (with 1MB cache) and am told it works.

Yeah, like I know anything about these things! I'd like to get it going. The
guy who (very kindly) posted it to me is unavailable at the moment, out of
the country on business. I've been driving myself batty all night playing
with it, following his instructions (using a serial cable/terminal client to
monitor it from Windows), I have no monitor, keyboard etc. for it.

I can find virtually nothing of use on the net about it. Sun's site isn't
that helpful, I've downloaded the manual but I really need a technician's
manual, not a users manual. The only usenet groups I can see are more about
porting Linux for it, not about hardware. I'm sure these guys don't have a
mobo and various SCSI drives/PSU/etc spread all over their test bench.

Anyone have any ideas about where I can find out what I need to know to get
it running, even posting? He'll be back in a while and will no doubt help me
but I've just spent hours messing with this thing and am impatient.

Thank you.

As others have said, Sparc20s are stable, reliable boxes even if they
are getting a bit long in the tooth. I still use them in my lab, and in
fact have more than I need.

I'm not sure what it would cost to ship one from Canada to NZ, but I'd
be happy to send you one if you cover the shipping - I'll even upgrade
memory and disk to make it more worthwhile since I have plenty of spares.

Email me if you wish to discuss further.

P2B

 

[~misfit~]

As others have said, Sparc20s are stable, reliable boxes even if they
are getting a bit long in the tooth. I still use them in my lab, and
in fact have more than I need.

I'm not sure what it would cost to ship one from Canada to NZ, but I'd
be happy to send you one if you cover the shipping - I'll even upgrade
memory and disk to make it more worthwhile since I have plenty of
spares.

Email me if you wish to discuss further.

P2B

I have emailed you, thanks.

 

[Phil Weldon]

What you have is a museum piece, of purely historical interest. With
Pentium II/128 Mbyte memory performance class.

--
Phil Weldon, pweldonatmindjumpdotcom
For communication,
replace "at" with the 'at sign'
replace "mindjump" with "mindspring."
replace "dot" with "."

 

[Juhan Leemet]

What you have is a museum piece, of purely historical interest. With
Pentium II/128 Mbyte memory performance class.

So? What are we goind? Calculating the answer to the most important
question in the universe? (that's 42!)

A Sparc20 is a very nicely engineered system. Furthermore, you can pump it
up to 4xCPU SMP with 512MB memory. Try that with a Pentium II/128. It's
still a nice platform to learn about SMP behaviour. Why pay $1000++?

p.s. Too bad he didn't get the case. That was nicely made, too.

 

[~misfit~]

So? What are we doing? Calculating the answer to the most important
question in the universe? (that's 42!)

Yeah, I know it isn't a Cray, I am just curious about differing
architectures, I've only ever had x86 really, except for an Amiga early-on.

A Sparc20 is a very nicely engineered system. Furthermore, you can
pump it up to 4xCPU SMP with 512MB memory. Try that with a Pentium
II/128. It's still a nice platform to learn about SMP behaviour. Why
pay $1000++?

p.s. Too bad he didn't get the case. That was nicely made, too.

Yep, so I've heard. Anyway, I can't seem to get it going and, without a case
it's a hassle to 'house' anywhere so I guess it goes into the 'maybe later'
box.

Thanks all.

 

[Phil Weldon]

Your answer is better than mine, for I was thinking of a much earlier
Sparcstation.

--
Phil Weldon, pweldonatmindjumpdotcom
For communication,
replace "at" with the 'at sign'
replace "mindjump" with "mindspring."
replace "dot" with "."