Old SUN Microsystems kit

[Greenmantle]

Would like to donate rather than bin some SUN kit.
EBAY doesn't seem to be the way to go.
Does anyone know of people / organisations that would be interested?

[Mr Happy]

Depends on how old is old really, if it's so old as to be unusable for anything productive then it might be worth a call to Bletchley and the National Computing Museum, as it could be something they could make use of.

Other than that, maybe a local uni/college if it's something usable but not commercially usable.

Worst case - e-waste recyclers/refurbishers like https://www.cprcomputerrecycling.co.uk/ (no affiliation, never used, just popped up in a search)

[sbk1972]

I have an old SParc 20 running solaris 10. I was a Sunos / solaris admin for many years but left when oracle raped / ruined Sun.

Tremendous OS. Tremendous hardware.

Always found it funny how the later system was were purchased by customers and then configured down with CPU capping due to the license costs. Like having a v12 car but restricting it to a 4 cylinder.

Oracle / Redhat. Redhat robbed all the best bits out of the numerous system 5 unix versions.

moved in to the world of PM / Governace now and am much older. I cant remember how to boot up a server now lol

SBK

[sbk1972]

Last I read was the Solaris 11 or 12 was going to be the latest version and that was it for Solaris. Is that still the case ? Previous version were still supported but no new versions.

I still get Oracle patch updates emailed to me. I keep trying to unsubscribe but they keep emailing them.

Solaris 10 to me was a tremendous OS. Had it all. Zones, capping, was robust.

SBK

[xeny]

Long time since I touched a 20. If it is convenient, could you do me a favour and measure how thick the steel that makes up the bottom part of the chassis is?

[pistonheadforum]

This reminds me I have an old Blade 100 (150?) somewhere in the loft. I've got a IDE to SATA adapter that I planned to allow me to use a SSD with it rather than the old spinning hard which is years old.

When a student years ago felt that using a lab SPARC 20 was a real treat - used to have optical mice, openlook and netscape navigator on them. Much cooler than the crusty Compaq 386s in the labs.

[pistonheadforum]

Also have an old SGI O2 (not the super fast ones think it's an R5000 cpu) and an Octane (large green beast) in the same loft.

The SGI O2 and Octane were being thrown out and I though they might be of use but no real software available and they are noise power hundgy devices. The best clicky-clicky keyboard though.

[eharding]

pistonheadforum said:

This reminds me I have an old Blade 100 (150?) somewhere in the loft. I've got a IDE to SATA adapter that I planned to allow me to use a SSD with it rather than the old spinning hard which is years old.

The idprom NVRAM chip battery on the Blade and some other Sun kit has a habit of expiring, meaning things like the MAC address can't be found - you can get new 'old stock' replacement chips, and try and reset the details via the OpenBoot monitor, but chances are the replacement chips are of a similar vintage to the original and the batteries in those have expired as well - there are workarounds which involve opening up the chip package and wiring in a an alternative battery though.

Edited by eharding on Sunday 7th May 20:26

[pistonheadforum]

eharding said:

The idprom NVRAM chip battery on the Blade and some other Sun kit has a habit of expiring, meaning things like the MAC address can't be found - you can get new 'old stock' replacement chips, and try and reset the details via the OpenBoot monitor, but chances are the replacement chips are of a similar vintage to the original and the batteries in those have expired as well - there are workarounds which involve opening up the chip package and wiring in a an alternative battery though.

Edited by eharding on Sunday 7th May 20:26

Oh you've got me wondering now - might have to dig it out and see what state it's in.