I was reading misc.forsale.computers the other day, and it looked like
there was a lot of Sun stuff for sale at reasonable prices.  This got
me thinking that it might be fun to pick one up to play around with.
It also sounds like a better way to have a computer running UNIX than
to buy a more powerful PC and spend $800 - 1000 for a 80x86 UNIX.

So, any suggestions for what I should look for?  What model numbers?
How much disk should I shoot for?  What kind of monitor?  Any
suggestions would be appreciated.

78 responses total.

I heard from a friend that someone he knew was selling a sun3/50 for 1500.
I think that one is gone.

Most of the Sun workstations you see on the net will probably be
"diskless", which means just what its name implies -- the machine
does not have a hard disk.  (Or, it might have a 40MB hard drive
for swap, but this is close enough to diskless to not matter.)
Diskless workstations are fine if you are going to be running it in
a university computer lab, with lots of other Suns and a master server
that it can boot from.  However, it will not work well for a home
machine.

You will probably want at least 150MB of disk, which will probably
cost you significantly (i.e., $500 or so) more than a diskless
workstation.

        Would someone be willing to give a brief overview of what the
different Sun machines are like, say, compared to Grex?  I'd like to know
a little about their capabilities, new and used prices, and the
distinctions between them.

That's a good idea, I am kind of looking for a new machine too, but haven't
decided on what kind of hardware platform, user interface platform, and
operating system.

Here are some of the older Sun's (You won't see many of these for sale
anymore):

Sun-1 family.  DOES NOT RUN BSD UNIX.  68000 based.  Runs Unisoft
Unix.
Sun-1/100       The original "desktop" Unix workstation.  Does not
                run BSD.
Sun-1/150       A rack-mount "fileserver" for the above.  Does not
                run BSD.

Sun-2 family.  68010 based.  Two major variants:

Multibus:

sun-2/120               A "tower" system. Limited slots
Sun-2/170               A rackmount "fileserver".
You may also occasionally see:
Sun-2/100U              A sun-1/100 that's been upgraded.  Really limited
                        slots
Sun-2/150U              Essentially, a /170.  May still have sun-1
                        style keyboard and display.

VME:
Sun-2/50                Actually, more or less an SBD design.
Sun-2/160 (???)         VME bus machine.

Here's where my recollection gets a bit scarce:
(But these are all 68020 based machines.)

Sun-3/50                This is a more or less
                                SBD design.  Does support SCSI, ethernet
sun-3/110                       desktop workstation w/ color display
Sun-3/160                       tower system
sun-3/180                       rackmount system
sun-3/280                       faster rackmount system

I don't know if anything came out called a "sun-4" per se.  However
this would be the sparc chipset -- such as the "sparcstation I"
and sucessors.

Past this, I haven't kept track.  It may not make much difference
from the used equipment market yet though.

You should also keep in mind operating systems:

SunOS 1.1 through 1.4  You won't see many of these.
SunOS 2.x               You won't see these either.
SunOS 3.2, 3.4, 3.5 (and a rumoured 3.6).  These were pretty stable,
                        and gained a sort of extension on life when
                        sunOS 4 proved a bit flakey.  If you get
                        a sun-2, this is probably what you will want
                        to run (ie, 3.5 is probalby the best you can do)
SunOS 4.0               ambitious.  Perhaps a bit overly so
SunOS 4.0.1             not quite as flakey
SunOS 4.1(.?)           starting to get there.

You should try for documentation as well.  Ideally for the version
you are able to get tapes for.  The tapes to install an operation
system may be the hardest item to come by.

        what about prices?  i'm looking at getting a 33mhz 486
        from gateway and putting sco unix on it...the pc will
        run about $3000 before multiport board and tape backup.
        how do suns compare (new prices).

        You mean you have all of those machines, Marcus?  Are they running?
(-:
        Thanks for the info!

My recollection would be a lot less scarce if I actually had them.

But who knows what could be in the back corner of that basement? :)

        Oh, your REcollection.  I missed part of a word there.

 a few additions:  

  in addition to the 3/50 there were 3/60s, too, which were essentially
3/50s with double (?) the clock speed.

  there also is a Sun 4 series, and they may not all be SPARC machines.
There're definitely 4/110s and 4/280s, and the Sparcstation 1 and
Sparcstation 1+ are the 4/60 and 4/65 respectively..  Don't know what
that makes the Sparcstation SLC..

  SunOS was up to 4.1.1 last time I looked, but that's a few months ago..
Also, I believe I've heard of a SunOS 4 version for the Sun 2s, though
that may be myth.  Given the resources it would need, I can't imagine
wanting to run it anyways..

I believe the Sun 4 series are all SPARCs.

I also believe SunOS 4 only runs on Sun-3's and better.

Sun also sold the 386i, known to its followers as the "Roadrunner" (for
reasons I cannot fathom).  There were several different models of
386i -- maybe 386i/50 and 386i/60?  /120, too?  At any rate Sun did
not make revs of SunOS higher than 3.5 for the 386i line, although
386i's did include DOS Merge (for running DOS applications under Unix)
as well as OpenWindows and, of course, SunOS.  The 386i is, of course,
an Intel i386DX-based machine, whereas the Sun-[123] all have Motorala
chips, and the Sun-4s have Sun's own SPARC chips.  You may be able to
find a 386i cheaply, though, since Sun no longer supports it.

SunOS is now called Solaris (I believe SunOS 4.1.1 = Solaris 1.0), and
is sold by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sun Microsystems, called SunSoft.
Sun has announced that SunOS 5.0 (Solaris 2.0, really) will be available
for the Intel i386-based machines as well as the SPARC line.  SunOS 5.0
will supposedly be based on SysVr4, not 4.3BSD, and the i386 port will
be done by Interactive, whom Sun recently purchased from Kodak.

(Continuing a bit further on this thread, 4.4BSD will supposedly be
available for the i386 when it comes out, and BSD, Inc. (not affiliated
with the University of California at Berkeley) will be coming out with
a 4.3BSD port to the i386 soon.  4.3BSD/386 will supposedly sell for
$999, full source included.  (BSDI has rewritten the portions of 4.3BSD
that were not publically-available; mostly parts of the kernel.
I do not know whether the BSDI-authored portions of their 4.3BSD port
will be covered by the same distribution limitations (or lack thereof)
that the Berkeley-authored portions are.)  Mt. Xinu also has Mach port
for the 386, although device support is somewhat slim at this time.
I think 1992 will be a very interesting year for the i386-Unix market.)

I hear a lot about Mach, what is it and what machines does it run on.

Mach is an OS kernel developed at Carnegie-Mellon University, whose
notable features are modularity and "threads" (or "lightwight
processes").  I don't know which machines it runs on, but I believe
versions are available for VAXen and the i386.

  And the Next, apparently..

  SunOS 4.x includes many Mach-like features (particularly lwp's..)

re 12:  Is that the same SunSoft that wrote those really really cool 
videogames for the Nintendo?  I've been SO addicted to Blaster Master ...

I doubt it.

Re: SunOs 4.0 and the Sun 2 :

        Incorrect.  Sun 2 machines may run sunos 4.1.1 (The last version of 
sunos that supports the Sun/2) only if they have the newer (revision 1.0) or
later Roms (256k instead of 128k.)
It is discouraged however, and it requires 4 meg of ram just to get the 
eggbeater in the air.  On a machine with a 7 meg limit, this is a pretty 
serious drawback.

I'll sell you a Sun/2 just like Grex's but with st506 drives and a qic-02
tape.
How much do you want to pay?

  I might be interested in buying the tape drive, if the price was right..

What is a 'right' price?

Items in two conferences.
SHeesh.

  I don't know, especially now that I learn my car needs $450
in transmission repairs (actually, a re-build..)

   I talked to a friend in CA a couple of days ago, about equipment for
Grex.  It seems that the price on Sun 3/50's has fallen to the $600
and below class.  Sun 3's are now dead, dead, dead in the "real world"
thanks to Sun's rather bizarre policy of absolutely pushing their
customers into Sparc stuff.  Bad news for customers, but probably
very good for us folk...

Now, if we can just fine one with enough VME slots and VME-to-multibus
slots; we can actually move the systech card, & the 9 track tape over to
the sun-3; and we'll be doing quite nicely.  We can also put SCSI disk
here on the sun-2, and move that over to the sun3; or if we can find
enough of those adaptors, move the xylogics card and the SMD drives over
as well.  Lots of wonderful upgrade opportunities, if we play our cards
right, especially as prices drop.

   I think the cheapest Sun-3 that has VME slots is a 3/110; that has
three slots.  The next bigger is a 3/160, with six slots.

I finally got ahold of someone who knows, and he says that there is 
'little or no chance' of making imbedded scsi work on a sun/2s scsi bus.
He suggested that the best arrangement that ever came out of that was
a fast esdi controller and sunos 3.5. 

   Now thats interesting.  I've been looking at SCSI documentation
lately, and I can't see any reason why it won't work. 
   The important thing is that the drive is at least SCSI-1.  From
everything I've read, SCSI-2 works on SCSI-1 controllers.  There
was a mac based newsletter that tried this out for Mac's, and found
that to be the case?
   Could there be someting in the Sun-2 that gets messed up?

I don't know much about both of them, but I was told by the tech-reps of
some distributor that it doesn't work.  I bet they had not tried a
workaround, maybe by switching some of the signals.

As long as your SCSI-2 device doesn't use "wide" SCSI (i.e., a 16-bit
wide bus), it should work fine with a SCSI-1 host adapter; you just
won't be able to use any of the special SCSI-2 features.

Is that the only difference, all same control signals otherwise?

   Thats what the documentation says.  Mustafa, you're saying a tech-rep
said this about Suns?  This could be important to us, so if you have
the oppurtunity to check this out again, please do.
   Grex can use SCSI disks; with the continuing availability of cheaper
units, its only a matter of time before I stumble upon a dontation
of some sort.

No, they said it in general attaching SCSI-2 disks to SCSI.  My question was
specific to a full SCSI host adapter to be connected to a SCSI-2 device.

The SCSI-2 units were a hard disk, and some sort of CD-ROM drive, I think.
It is a while back, so I remember the HD part of it.  They said that
the connections were different, and I accepted that as SCSI and SCSI-2
not being compatible.  I don't know how many of the pins on a SCSI connection
are free, and if those are used by SCSI-2 for 16bit transfers.

I don't have neither pin assignments available.  The UofM computer center
documentations may cover that.

I just talked the other day to the head of sun in brazil (whose office
is here in SF,) he claims that in all his experience he has never seen
an imbedded scsi drive on a sun-2, and rarely even on sun 3's.
He said that Sun reprograms the roms on the scsi drives that they resell,
and that the most common configuration for Sun 3's was a 141meg ESDI 
with an adaptec board.
Hm, that's the same thing that the other guy told me abotu sun 2's.

He also indicated that the maximum memory that should be installed in a sun/2
is 6 megs.  He stated that this was a design limit.

   It might be the design limit, but I've seen the /usr/adm/messages output
from a 7M machine.  I've heard that with some work you can get 8M in such
a machine.  But I'll personally settle for six.

I get six working all the time.
I can't seem to get 7 working right.
I have grown skeptical about information from sun.

   Do you get parity errors that don't make sense?  Did your blackplane
come wired with eight slots for P2, or what?  I thought that only six
slots were wired P2 from the factory.  It was my understanding that the
first conflict came somewhere in the 8th meg of memory, as thats were
the Sun video card would normally live.
   But at least you can have six meg in; that gives me some hope that we
can do the same here without a blackplane rewiring session.

That was seven meg with the 4 meg ram card installed.
No, my 2/170 has 6 slots and the 2/120 has 5 slots wired together, as usual.

   So you had 1 4M card and 2 1M in place?

   I've kept on hearing about putting memory cards on either side of
the CPU card.  Thats what I did for Grex when we got the extra memory
up.  <mem> <mem> <cpu> <mem> <mem> is the current arrangement.  You
did something like this?

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