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

From: Zane H. Healy <healyzh_at_aracnet.com>
Date: Mon May 7 10:24:48 2001

>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. :-)

OK, obviously you're in a lot less of a Sparc poor area than some of us!
The only Sun stuff I've seen at the local swap meet is some manuals,
QIC-150's, and a couple CD's. The only hardware I've found in the last few
years was some Sparc 2's at the local scrapper, and some dead 1962 monitors
at a couple places. That leaves ePay.

Though I did hear one of the guys one of my neighbors works with found some
Sparc 10's at a Goodwill on the other side of town.

I know there are companies that use them in the area, but it could be there
like the one I work for and are still using them all, we're using Sparc 2's
for certain jobs (even know of one computer room with a IPC). I was
walking through one of our computer rooms that I'd not been in for a long
time a few weeks ago, I couldn't believe the huge number of Sparc 10's that
we're still using!

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

Wow! I'd love to see them at that price. Of course I think my Sparc 20
with dual SM71's and a CD-ROM (no RAM or S-Bus cards) only cost me $150 on
eBay, but it was listed such that it looked like a bare base.

>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. :-)

I cheated, and just stuck a sheet of cardboard under the drive, with screws
in the bottom holes of the drive, the combo is enough to get it to the
height of the SCA connector, my only concern being if the drive vibrations
are enough to loosen the connection over time and have it unplug itself.

                        Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh_at_aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
| healyzh_at_holonet.net (alternate)  | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
|     Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing,    |
|                   and Zane's Computer Museum.                 |
|                 http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/              |
Received on Mon May 07 2001 - 10:24:48 BST

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