Void * - Sun Ultra 2

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Sun Ultra 2
Filed under: Retro computing
So I picked up a Sun Ultra 2. This was over Yule vacation, I was at RE-PC and saw it sitting on the shelf. Two 300Mhz UltraSPARC II CPUs, 2gb of RAM and a busted power supply. Reader, I could not say no. Even though I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Linux user, I have a history with Sun machines. I picked up a Sparc 20 back in college and even made a friend because of it. I had various bits of Sun kit for a long time and ran Linux on most of them. Life happened, I dont have any of that kit anymore. My first real industry job was as a Solaris system administrator. I had one of the newer Sparcs for a desktop (A 30 at first, I think, and then at 45 at the end) and had one of those SunPCI cards for it. It was clear, even at the time, that Sun was on its way out. PC architecture servers were eating up the market share of those old dedicated UNIX machines. Since the old Sparc workstations (the 1 through 20) were called pizza boxes due to their shape, I've affectionately named this machine DeepDish. Its a double height case in the same style as those so it seemed fitting. Its also a bit of a Hitchhikers Guide reference. I bought all new caps for the PSU and replaced them, but still couldnt get the supply to start up. One of the caps leaked badly, and in a dense part of the board. Some component legs showed signs of corrosion, and that can creep up and into the plastic package of the component and eat it from the inside. I feel I can fix it with more time, but the ICF is coming up and I have a long ways to go on this machine so I got a replacement PSU on ebay. The new PSU works and with that sorted I turned to cleanup. It was amazingly dusty. After a good clean and a reseat of all cards I got a green power light on the motherboard and diagnostic output from the serial port. It reports both CPUs working and all RAM available, so thats a good sign. I picked up a Creator3D card since this machine sports the Creator3D badge on the front. Thats where I'm currently at, since I dont have the right kind of 13W3 adapter for it. Note to others getting into Sun hardware, the UPA video cards use the SGI style DDC pinout on their 13W3 ports, not the Sun standard. Who knows why. I got one of those configurable 13W3 to VGA adapters with the dip switches to try and get around the problem, I'll post updates once thats in.
Author: Lady Errant Published on: Feb 26, 2025, 04:28 PM GMT Permalink

Sun Ultra 2

Filed under: Retro computing

So I picked up a Sun Ultra 2. This was over Yule vacation, I was at RE-PC and saw it sitting on the shelf. Two 300Mhz UltraSPARC II CPUs, 2gb of RAM and a busted power supply. Reader, I could not say no.

Even though I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Linux user, I have a history with Sun machines. I picked up a Sparc 20 back in college and even made a friend because of it. I had various bits of Sun kit for a long time and ran Linux on most of them. Life happened, I dont have any of that kit anymore. My first real industry job was as a Solaris system administrator. I had one of the newer Sparcs for a desktop (A 30 at first, I think, and then at 45 at the end) and had one of those SunPCI cards for it. It was clear, even at the time, that Sun was on its way out. PC architecture servers were eating up the market share of those old dedicated UNIX machines.

Since the old Sparc workstations (the 1 through 20) were called pizza boxes due to their shape, I've affectionately named this machine DeepDish. Its a double height case in the same style as those so it seemed fitting. Its also a bit of a Hitchhikers Guide reference. I bought all new caps for the PSU and replaced them, but still couldnt get the supply to start up. One of the caps leaked badly, and in a dense part of the board. Some component legs showed signs of corrosion, and that can creep up and into the plastic package of the component and eat it from the inside. I feel I can fix it with more time, but the ICF is coming up and I have a long ways to go on this machine so I got a replacement PSU on ebay.

The new PSU works and with that sorted I turned to cleanup. It was amazingly dusty. After a good clean and a reseat of all cards I got a green power light on the motherboard and diagnostic output from the serial port. It reports both CPUs working and all RAM available, so thats a good sign. I picked up a Creator3D card since this machine sports the Creator3D badge on the front. Thats where I'm currently at, since I dont have the right kind of 13W3 adapter for it. Note to others getting into Sun hardware, the UPA video cards use the SGI style DDC pinout on their 13W3 ports, not the Sun standard. Who knows why. I got one of those configurable 13W3 to VGA adapters with the dip switches to try and get around the problem, I'll post updates once thats in.

Author: Lady Errant
Published on: Feb 26, 2025, 04:28 PM GMT
Permalink

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