Sun Sparc systems and sheet metal (was: Re: Trenton Computer...)

From: R. D. Davis <rdd_at_smart.net>
Date: Sun May 6 23:09:08 2001

On Sun, 6 May 2001, Zane H. Healy wrote:
[someone else [who?] wrote:]
> >BTW the Sparc-20's were going for $400 complete. I have them in the lab
> >(at work) so I had no interest in them.

Any idea you know what CPUs these had in them, such as the faster
aftermarket replacements? The US$400 price seems rather high, given
that I paid US$75 for a SparcServer 1000 with three CPUs, 768MB of RAM,
four hard drives, a CD-ROM drive and a 4mm internal tape drive at the
last hamfest... the seller wanted US$100 for it, but I managed to get
the price down to a slightly more reasonable level. :-)

> reasonable price. I'm even seeing nice dual processor Ultra 2's for under
> $2000. If the Sparc 20's were going for $400, then they'd better have
> either good processors or a monitor included.

Yes... I've seen Sparc 20's with slowish processors and about 32MB of
RAM and a 2GB drive selling for under US$50.

> Of course extra pieces might cost a pretty penny, though I did just pick up
> some dirt cheap 32MB DIMM's that should work in my Sparc 20 on eBay. What
> I'd really like to find is a 8MB VSIMM for it, and that costs more than I
> want to spend. The 100Mbit S-Bus boards will also cost you. Then there is
> the price of a mounting bracket for HD's, I ended up using a piece of thick
> cardboard yesterday for a Sparc 5 I'm playing with!

Hmmm... you can get some cheap sheet-metal from places that sell
heating and air-conditioning equipment. A few years ago, back around
1980, one of them even bent the metal for me to form a cover for a
sound sythesizer switch panel. An added bounus: the metal was
galvanized, so I never had to paint it. :-)

--
Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: 
All Rights Reserved            an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & 
rdd_at_perqlogic.com 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such
http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd   beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.
Received on Sun May 06 2001 - 23:09:08 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:34:07 BST