My Free PC of the day - A Sun Ultra 30 Creator 3D! [56k]

[Serra]

Well boys and girls, it looks like I have a new toy to play with and I thought I'd share with everyone here first. I was rooting through some "garbage" at work the other day (128MB PC133 RAM modules, spare DVD-ROMs, a few external 3x CD-burners from back in the day, etc.) that was just going to be thrown out like garbage when I came accross it... a Sun Microsystems Ultra 30 3D Creator (and a compatable keyboard / mouse... thanks Sun for ensuring that only Sun products could be used with your tech)!

Released in about 2001 (from what I understand from the Internets), this system seems to have received a few upgrades from their regular spec. For one thing, it has 2x 4.3GB SCSI hard drives instead of just one (not sure whether they have been RAIDed or not)... but more interestingly (to me anyway), it features dual video cards! That's right, I *finally* have a dual-GPU system! Okay, sure, one could argue that because they have a Sun-proprietary video-out port the whole system is useless to me unless I can find an adapter, but hey, it's fun (you'll note I just don't even try to mention quality).

Don't get me wrong, I don't really think I'll be keeping the internals of this once-beast... but the case certainly has taken me. The pictures below don't do it justice (because I can't use a camera for beans), but take my word for it - it is a very sweet looking case. Except for a small leg being missing on the bottom it's in perfect condition, and the substantial room between the plastic and steel cage up front will easily leave room for dual 120mm fan intakes, the 80mm at the back will fit a 120mm once the PSU has been changed for a smaller one (the current one is fairly large, a newer PSU should be smaller), and the general design of using mesh steel wherever possible will assist ventilation quite nicely. There will have to be some mobo plate and back plate modification, but that's a fairly minor price to pay. Additionally, due to the size of the motherboard currently in there, once I replace it with a regular ATX board, it should free up more room, and I have a very good feeling that I should be able to fit a water cooling solution in there quite comfortably.

Specs: [what I've been able to piece together anyway without fully disassembling it yet)
- CPU: ??? (heatsink covers exact type and I don't have a small enough wrench to get it... the bolts are inside the fans fins). It should be either a 250 or 300 MHz UltraSPARC II though.
- RAM: 8x 32MB 60ns DIMMs (256MB effective)
- Hard Drive: 2x Seagate ST34371WC
- Form: 3.5"
- Interface: Ultra Wide SCSI-3 (80 pin)
- Capacity: 4.3GB
- Average Seek: 8.8/9.9ms
- Data Transfer Rate: 40MB/s
- Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM
- Buffer: 512KB
- Video Card: 2x Sun Microsystems Creator3D Series 3 FFB2+ (p/n 501-4788)
- "Double Buffered" 125MHz
- 24-bit colour support max
- Resolution up to 1920x1200 70Mhz
- PSU: Lucent Technologies 300W
- Other: It turns out the network port *may* be gigabit


Pictures:
*Pictures were taken with a new digital camera... still not used to it yet.

The Front: (Camera really makes my carpet look ugly)
http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/4886/sd530115lg5.th.jpg (http://img166.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sd530115lg5.jpg)

The Back:
http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/807/backiq4.th.jpg (http://img515.imageshack.us/my.php?image=backiq4.jpg)

Closeup of back showing both video cards [fuzzy]:
http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/8669/backcloseupla4.th.jpg (http://img237.imageshack.us/my.php?image=backcloseupla4.jpg)

The Insides:
http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/1167/insideug3.th.jpg (http://img441.imageshack.us/my.php?image=insideug3.jpg)

Closeup of RAM area:
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/944/ramshotba3.th.jpg (http://img404.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ramshotba3.jpg)

The Side (door closed):
http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/394/sideclosedzy6.th.jpg (http://img409.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sideclosedzy6.jpg)

[[XC] moddolicous]

I've always wanted to mess around with a sparc system. I think Solaris and a few linux distros can run on it right? Not sure about Windoze. Anyways, looks like a nice rig. I'd definitely keep it just because you can. Does it still work? Are those S-video outs on the video card?

[Serra]

As far as I know it still works, but I wouldn't be surprised if the PSU or a single hard drive had failed (which would be fine). The only issue is getting a video adapter so I can actually find out.

And no, they aren't S-Video ports on the back... it's some kind of second proprietary plug. It looks more or less like an s-video, but instead of a small slot for the "stick" attachment, it's just got more holes for pins (and the pins don't line up with s-video).

But since I don't have a spare system, I probably will keep it for awhile if I can make sure it works... maybe run a firewall on it or something.

[DTU_XaVier]

Keep the harddrives, just because they're SCSI :p:...
Otherwise looks like a pretty nice case... Is it ATX-compatible??
Look at the PSU-specs (you can see them in the fourth picture)... 5v=30amp, 3.3v=50amp, 12v=7amp!
A mind-boggling 84watts on the 12v line... then we've got 216w off the 5v and 3.3v... Talk about miscalculations :rotf: :rofl:

Best Regards :toast:

[oicurafox2000]

Look at the PSU-specs (you can see them in the fourth picture)... 5v=30amp, 3.3v=50amp, 12v=7amp!
A mind-boggling 84watts on the 12v line... then we've got 216w off the 5v and 3.3v... Talk about miscalculations :rotf: :rofl:

No,its not a miscalculation. Hardware at the time didn't use the +12v. line for much at all. In fact 8-12v. on the +12v. line was even enough during the socket 462 era. It was only with the release of more power hungry video cards that exploited the +12v. rail. I just pulled a PSU out of my buddys computer(socket A) with 6v. on the +12v. rail. Works fine.;)

[uOpt]

You can download a random Linux CD and boot. It will tell you what the hardware is, exactly.

[Dr_at_Home]

Nice find.

My 24" CRT would work with those cards. Its got that odd connector (13w3?) and i've never been able to use it, unless I got an adapter for it, which do exsist. Thankfully it has vga also. :p:

edit- the adapter http://www.deepspacecables.com/models/90w10.html

[[XC] moddolicous]

Not sure if it is true or not, but I heard that Sparc cpu's + Solaris = best email server. Again, I know absolutely nothing about these types of Cpu's, but I would definitely keep it.

[Serra]

Nice find.

My 24" CRT would work with those cards. Its got that odd connector (13w3?) and i've never been able to use it, unless I got an adapter for it, which do exsist. Thankfully it has vga also. :p:

edit- the adapter http://www.deepspacecables.com/models/90w10.html

Oooo! I spent a few minutes at work today looking for adaptors, and those are the cheapest I've seen (including eBay). Thanks for the link!

I'll order the adapter this weekend and assuming neither the mobo or CPU are dead (anything else I can deal with, though the PSU would have to be an altered spare I have here) I'll post some better info on it some time next week or the week after hopefully. Of course, the issue then would become what cause I should throw it behind...

[[XC] Lead Head]

Those aren't DIMMs, those are EDO SIMMs!

[Bergo]

i played around with a sun sparc station a while ago, was pretty kewl, ran debian on it IIRC was relatively useless, bat having everything stacked up on each other and being connected externally via SCSI was kinda neat

found a pic that looks something like it: http://neriki.free.fr/sparcclustpetit.jpg

the hdd's were external, which was kinda weird.

[STEvil]

I've got a pair of Sun 24" CRT's that would go good on it :D

[Serra]

:woot:

I was able to find a few Sun 13w3 -> VGA cables at work in the pile of junk I originally got the Sun unit from (it took me about an hour to find them though)!

When I got home I tried out one of the 3 I grabbed (I figured it has two video cards, so I'll grab 3 just in case one's broken or something) and ---- nothing. The computer started up (sounds like a fricken jet and I can honestly feel the ground rumble a little near the case from what I assume to be the hard drives), but no video. So, rationalizing that it has 2 video cards and was being thrown out, I decided to try each video card seperately in each slot. Still nothing. Replace a hard drive with another of the same type I also found: still nothing. And just as I was ready to give up, I tried one of other video cables and... it worked!

Apparently I am now also running SunOS Release 5.8 in addition to Windows XP. There's a lot to do with this box, like re-install an OS because whoever tried wiping this hard drive screwed up the OS a little, replace every fan in this thing, and introduce a little foam padding to some select areas, but otherwise it's going!

Now to figure out what I'll use it for. Firewall? Web server? One of the XS computing teams? The possibilities are... um... not endless because it is about 5 years old... but... um... there!

[Bloody_Sorcerer]

you sir need to discover the macro setting on your camera ;)

have fun with the case and/or guts, depending on what you decide to do with it :)

[[XC] moddolicous]

Well, I'm not sure of many projects that are able to use Sparc cpu's to their full advantage. Not sure of any firewall OS's that support Sparc. I'm leaning towards web server or email server.

[illmatik]

Get a login on sun.com. Download Solaris 10. At boottime, Stop-A, and once at the prompt type boot cdrom Amazing OS. I used to have dual cpu Ultra 60 w/ a creator card, awesome machine. Ran Solaris10 and Suse 8 multiboot. They do make excellent mail and web servers as you can run Trusted Solaris which is well locked down, or you can just download a hardening script and then run one of those linux based Hax0r OSes from one of your PCs to checkit out. Now I have a sunblade 100 I overclocked to 600Mhz. When I put the P3 thermalright cooler on, I should be able to get it a lil higher ;) You can OC some sparcs funny enough. Once I found that out I decided to keep the blade a lil longer just on Xtreme Principals ;)

I always keep a sparc around because of what I do. A very high percentage of wall st shops are still running a lot of mission critical stuff on sparcs. Sun is also one of the flashier makes (they've employed Frog Design who Apple and NeXT have consulted with on many occasions in the past) when it comes to non-consumer stuff. If you look at the first Sparc III workstation (or some Ultra 80s) you'll see a design you've seen in something common to us XSers... The case the All in one Vapochill XE/PE/SE used/uses

Still a powerful platform in certain tasks, and amazing reliability/uptime in models that allow hot cpu/mem swapping and upgrading.. too bad they never made too many crunching/DC apps for it. There's gonna be a lot of super cheap multi-cpu (128way and beyond even) systems hitting ebay pretty soon.

[[XC] moddolicous]

Did you do anything with the rig?

[Serra]

Actually a few things have gone forward with this since my last post. For example, today I just finished replacing the fans in the case with quieter, equally effective fans (the thing sounded like a frigging jet engine before). It was a bit of a task because I had to snip off the old proprietary connectors and re-work them to fit the new fans, but overall wasn't bad. Also, I've downloaded Solaris 8 and have it on CDs waiting for an install this weekend (I looked at the minimum requirements for Solaris 10 and found that I was *just* meeting them, so I thought I'd use 8, whose requirements I greatly exceed).

The biggest news though:

Using froogle I found a real treasure for this beauty. Sun.com had intrigued me with an odd entry about a possible co-processor card for this unit. I say I was intrigued because it shouldn't be capable of handling another Sparc CPU... and it wasn't. What it *was* capable of holding though was far cooler - the add-on co-processor card is a 400MHz AMD processor (note: 100MHz faster than the main processor, though not RISC based) w/ 2 PC-100 RAM slots on it (maximum RAM = 256MB). So anyway, back to froogle. Using that wonderful tool I found what seemed to be the *only* card on the Internets under $180US... I got it for $9.99 + ship.

So what does this mean for this box? According to SUN.com, this card allows me to run Windows 9x/NT *concurrently* with Solaris 8/9/10! Apparently the coprocessor card takes up to 4GB off the total hard drive space and can share the CD-ROM/network port. The coprocessor card also has its own USB and video ports, so if a person wants they can use seperate monitors for each function, or you could have two users each using their own OS at the same time without impacting the other (beyond things like sharing the hard drive time anyway).

I'm participating in an IT skills competition tomorrow (Saturday), so I hope to get Solaris 8 installed Sunday and (if I'm that lucky) the coprocessor card up and running by Monday/Tuesday.

[[XC] Lead Head]

Is it this card?
http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/mxsun_1935_2354318

If it is, it looks like you could put a higher end Socket 7 CPU in there, like a K6-3 500 or something.

[IFMU]

So what does this mean for this box? According to SUN.com, this card allows me to run Windows 9x/NT *concurrently* with Solaris 8/9/10! Apparently the coprocessor card takes up to 4GB off the total hard drive space and can share the CD-ROM/network port. The coprocessor card also has its own USB and video ports, so if a person wants they can use seperate monitors for each function, or you could have two users each using their own OS at the same time without impacting the other (beyond things like sharing the hard drive time anyway).
Now THAT is just fracking COOL!

Yea know.. if youre worried about that even slightly, I'd suggested getting a scsi raid setup on there somehow. That would seriously increase the multi-tasking capabilities of the hard drives. I'd suggest at least a raid0... maybe even go with something that might give a bit more performance increase.
At minimum do a dual scsi raid0 and if at all possible, do a raid 0 with 3 or more scsi drives.

Gotta say that system sounds freaking cool as hell... Id love to play around with something like that.

[Serra]

Is it this card?
http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/mxsun_1935_2354318

If it is, it looks like you could put a higher end Socket 7 CPU in there, like a K6-3 500 or something.

That's it. According to Sun it can't be upgraded, but that's pretty well what they say about everything (whether it's true or not - they want to sell you a better solution, not have you buy generic parts from anyone else).

Conveniently I did manage to get two other identical SCSI drives from clones of the computer I'm using, so at some point in the future RAID might be an option. Before that though I'll need the SCSI cable and - preferably - a RAID controller (if I can find a cheap enough old one that might be an option, but we'll see).

[[XC] moddolicous]

This machine sounds awesome. I don't know much about raid, but I think a nice raid 5 or raid 0+1 would work well with that setup.