Any uses for a Sun Sparq station? \ VOGONS

Any uses for a Sun Sparq station?

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First post, by ODwilly

Posted on 2014-08-23, 04:45

ODwilly Offline

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My neighbor has a complete system plus 2 or 3 boxes of parts. Are there any worthwhile uses for one of these anymore? I have no experience with Unix or anything like that, could be fun to learn. He has a video card and adapter to hook up a standard VGA monitor and everything. Most likely software as well. From what I have found it seems to have a 450mhz cpu. Any thoughts?

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 1 of 4, by BSA Starfire

Posted on 2014-08-23, 06:04

BSA Starfire Offline

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I used to have a ultrasparc years ago, played a mean game of quake!

286 20MHz,1MB RAM,Trident 8900B 1MB, Conner CFA-170A.SB 1350B
386SX 33MHz,ULSI 387,4MB Ram,OAK OTI077 1MB. Seagate ST1144A, MS WSS audio
Amstrad PC 9486i, DX/2 66, 16 MB RAM, Cirrus SVGA,Win 95,SB 16
Cyrix MII 333,128MB,SiS 6326 H0 rev,ESS 1869,Win ME

Reply 2 of 4, by ODwilly

Posted on 2014-08-23, 07:16

ODwilly Offline

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So you can game on these? Hmm, might have to clear up some space and give him a few bucks for it.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 3 of 4, by Matth79

Posted on 2014-08-23, 17:42

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation

Ah, if it's a 450MHz, the it must be this series
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ultra_series

You'd run OpenSolaris, or a Linux or BSD port - and then be looking for things which are either native, or can be compiled from source ... looks like Debian Sparc is currently maintained, as are a few others

Reply 4 of 4, by ODwilly

Posted on 2014-08-24, 03:08

ODwilly Offline

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Looks like the Sun Ultra 1 station in the very first picture, so I guess it is a 143-200mhz cpu. Thanks for the information! It is neat know that there still are maintained OS's for it.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

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