Sparc, not x86.
Can't run Windows.
Can run Solaris, Linux, and probably some BSD.

That's what I was wondering. I won't bother then!

wait thats a hell of a case well worth $5

Sun Workstation for 5 quid? Well worth it!

Actually, you could run Win98SE on this with a SunPCI card - essentially a complete K6-2 or (more suitable for this model) P3 computer on a PCI card that would let you run x86 stuff at native speeds in a window under Solaris.

Definitely qualifies as interesting. No reason it couldn't be used as a workstation either, just not a Windows machine.

Easily sells for over $150 on Ebay -- flip it for a good profit. 😜

Grzyb wrote:

Sparc, not x86.
Can't run Windows.
Can run Solaris, Linux, and probably some BSD.

Can't you run NT4 on Sparc CPUs ? (Sure it's not as good as on x86 but well ...)

Deksor wrote:

Can't you run NT4 on Sparc CPUs ? (Sure it's not as good as on x86 but well ...)

No.
Windows NT did support some RISC architectures, but not Sparc.

Deksor wrote:

Grzyb wrote:

Sparc, not x86.
Can't run Windows.
Can run Solaris, Linux, and probably some BSD.

Can't you run NT4 on Sparc CPUs ? (Sure it's not as good as on x86 but well ...)

IIRC, NT supported MIPS, PowerPC, and DEC Alpha. Not SPARC.

For that price hell yeah. If only for the case :p

Take it and learn about a new OS - always worth it.

I agree

wiretap wrote:

Easily sells for over $150 on Ebay -- flip it for a good profit. 😜

or buy it to save it from being scrapped and give it to someone who really wants it for a good price 😀

I had one just like that back in 1999 I think was the year.
It’s a Sun Solaris computer ( UNIX )
These computer where the backbone of most Large IT departments and the internet.
That workstation must have costs about $30,000 new back in 1999/2000
They used them in large corporation to write binaries and develop software and manage the corporate computers , servers , webservers and super computers.
( Banks, Sun corp, Microsoft corp, Internet portals, tel-co’s, etc. ).
Lots of large corporation used these computers.

Sun Microsystems was one of the computer giants to come out of Silicon Valley.
( HP, Sun, SGI, IBM ).

For 5 euro’s thats a steel.
It’s a little loud however.
And BIG.
I think it came with Solaris 8.

Not much you can do with it today but learn UNIX.

That my question.
What can you do with this?
£5 sounds like a bargain and I'd love a Sun but I'd need to justify with myself a reason for having one on my retro network.
Old Windows servers can act at DC's, and fun to play around with old versions of Exchange, etc. Not sure if Solaris has any benefit that a generix *nix box wouldn't?

This is sort of what I'm getting at. It's a bargain... if I need or want one!

I don't do any networking at all, nor have any interest in Linux or servers outside of my Raspberry Pi. Hopefully someone who is interested in this sort of PC picks it up.

Solaris is Unix, not Linux, and Sun systems can do a lot more than just networking (there's a reason Oracle - a database company - snapped them up). But that aside, if you're truly not interested it's better that someone who is takes it, and at this price pretty much anyone who is interested in these things should be able to afford it - just a shame the seller so mislabled it (it's an UltraSparc III, not "oil"...).

amadeus777999 wrote:

Take it and learn about a new OS - always worth it.

I wouldn't call Solaris a "new" OS... rather an "old, soon to be dead" OS and last Solaris versions runs on x86-64s (in fact it runs only on x86-64 as SPARC isn't supported since early version of Solaris 11) so not much sense in buying SPARC workstation solely for this purpose 😁

Sun made plain Unix workstations/servers, so don't expect much fun with it (it's nothing like SGIs for example), but there are people who collect them. You can run Solaris (upto version 10 or erarly 11 I think) and BSD, maybe some Linux on it.

I have Ultra 450 and Ultra 5. Very boring machines 😁

This price is crazy btw even for such boring machine so do as people above told 😀

PS: No such thing as "sparcoil" these CPUs were called UltraSPARCs - this particular machine will have series III CPUs.