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Looking for old Sun equipment

B

BrunoD

Member
Joined
Apr 16, 2009
Messages
18
Location
Belgium
I'm looking for old Sun Microsystems machines.

I have most Sparc-based models but am still missing a few to complete the collection, mostly all-in-ones.
I would really like to find some Sun 3 systems, they are really rare here. If anyone has one (or more of course ;) ) and you're willing to sell them to me, please let me know.
 
Which type are they? you can find the type number on a label on the back of the kb.
Thanks for checking.
 
Is this similar to what you are looking for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sun_3-80.jpg

There is a recycler in town that would get pallets of old Sun workstations. Because there was no demand for them, they got recycled. Shame.
I used to have a contact there but he has moved on and his replacement is not interested in saving any of the old stuff.

Below are some pictures of stuff that got recycled that prompted me to get in touch with them. Never saw anything on that scale in the time I was doing business with them.

I managed to get a super nice Ultra 80 Elite 3D with 4 processors while I still had my contact there.
 

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I know a chap that's looking for sensible offers on a REALLY old Sun - he's in the UK. Strangely enough I saw him yesterday & I was going to put the link up today. See my "sun 100" post later.
 
@ Chuckster_In_Jax: I don't think these recyclers have any idea what they are throwing away. I'm pretty sure that some of those systems would make more money than the scrap metals they end up with. Did none of those guys ever think of hiring someone who can take out the valuable things? If you see the prices of vintage computers you would say there is a market, no?

@ nige the hippy: great! Looking forward to that one!
 
It is hard to find Sun 3 stuff these days. There is still plenty around in garages, basements, and storage lockers. It is just too heavy to ship and really isn't worth enough to get people motivated enough to drag it up from the basement to try and sell. You just have to luck into someone local that needs space back. In Belgium that might be hard for the 68K stuff.

Did they sell much Sun 2/3 to Europe ?
 
I don't know what eventually happened to his collection, or if he is still trying to find homes for any, but I posted about the Sun 3/4 Zoo last year...

Sun3/4 Zoo needs help...

Might send him an email and see if he can point you anywhere. At least he's on the right side of the big water :)

-- edit --

Seems all the pics are missing... not a good sign :(
His pages were quite handy when I was messing with my 3/180 in the late 90s. Sadly, I lost that machine. I've been trying to find another Sun VME machine ever since... with SMD drives to match :D

No joy as of yet :(
__
Trevor
 
I'm afraid I can't help you out as I have a complete Ultra 3D creator system with 20" monitor, mouse, keyboard, external HD and external DAT, most of a Sun 4, most of a Sun 5 and that's about all I acquired as not too many people seem to be that interested in them, that I can see.
 
Thats a bummer, Sun hardware is really well engineered. It's just too heavy to hold on to. When I was there, we would clean sweep hundreds of the Sun-4 line every month for recycling. I considered grabbing a system but they are too heavy and impractical. I would like to find a Sun-2 series though. That would be very cool.

I went to high school in the 90s and remember visiting an online friend to see his Sun workstation. B&W monitor and all it was an amazing piece of equipment!
 
@ leaknoil: Suns in general are much rarer in Europe than in the US as far as I can see. Germany seems to be the exception to the rule but although I look on eBay frequently I never saw a Sun 2 or 3 in the entire European Union. I found a 3/60 in the Netherlands and a 3/50 and a 3/60 in Germany, all three came originally from universities and when they were decommissioned someone could take them home.

@ Lord Moz: The two Sun 3's mentioned above come from Peter's zoo. Although he didn't know me, he gave me a LOT of stuff: apart from the Sun 3's I brought a number of sparcstations, CRT's with every imaginable connector, cables, external HDD's,... Peter, if you read this: thanks again!

@ Druid6900: Sorry, I don't collect anything newer than Sun 4's (sparc processors before the ultra series).

@ atod: they're indeed pretty heavy but apart from the CRT's they are also in a handy format to store: you can just stack them and then they hardly take up any space :)
 
g4ugm said:
Quite a lot in the UK. It was very popular with UK Universities until Apollo came along and slashed the prices.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Computer

I would set up a search on E-Bay in the UK and see what pops up. Also worth asking UNIX Nerd as above.
Click to expand...

Apollo was later acquired by HP and became their line of servers. Those are quite fine computers also. Interestingly enough, Apollo was founded in the same town I grew up in.
 
BrunoD said:
@ atod: they're indeed pretty heavy but apart from the CRT's they are also in a handy format to store: you can just stack them and then they hardly take up any space :)
Click to expand...

Yup. The 20"+ monitors were not easy to carry. If I recall correctly, they had a special connector so one required a Sun monitor. In regards to weight, much of the other Sun equipment that passed my way was part of the (E)nterprise series, E4800, E6800, E10K, E25K. Those were very very large. :)
 
BrunoD said:
@ Lord Moz: The two Sun 3's mentioned above come from Peter's zoo. Although he didn't know me, he gave me a LOT of stuff: apart from the Sun 3's I brought a number of sparcstations, CRT's with every imaginable connector, cables, external HDD's,... Peter, if you read this: thanks again!
Click to expand...

It's nice to hear that at least some of the machines found a home. I should have thought to make a mirror of his site at least, but seems it's too late now.

The things you think about afterwards eh?

I'm always looking for Sun stuff as well... I have a 3/60, 2x Ultra 10s and an Ultra 60.
I picked up a number of VME cards over time, but no chassis or CPU cards.
There are a few on eBay, but I haven't wanted to pay the prices yet... have to see how finances go.

__
Trevor
 
I have a Sun SparcStation 10 (the pizza box) with all of the cords, the audio dongle, the audio box, keyboard, special mouse with special pad, and a ball mouse. I also have the big 200lb color monitor that you can buy if you're insterested :)

Everything works fine. It has Sun Solaris 7 on it (as well as the original CD's for the OS). There's also an external 4x scsi cd-rom drive.
 
atod said:
Yup. The 20"+ monitors were not easy to carry. If I recall correctly, they had a special connector so one required a Sun monitor. In regards to weight, much of the other Sun equipment that passed my way was part of the (E)nterprise series, E4800, E6800, E10K, E25K. Those were very very large. :)
Click to expand...

You can get VGA adaptors which are now inexpensive so don't let the lack of a monitor put you off. Harder is the keyboard and mouse which are special and as far as I know no adaptors exist for PC style keyboards. Many modern boxes can use USB..

p.s. I have a U60 and a SS20...
 
@ Lord Moz: I have kept an offline copy of the site :) I was worried that this would happen. Of course I could never publish it as it's Peter's work in it. I just kept it as it is a valuable source of information.

About the monitors: you can indeed easily find adaptors for the 13W3 monitors as used on the sparc machines but Sun 3's use BNC connectors: RGB + H/V sync. The sync is not the same as the sync on current (i.e. more recent) bnc monitors. At least that is what I was told.

Over the years I was able to save some Sparcstations: I have two 1+, a 2, a 4, a sparcSERVER 5, a 10 and two 20's plus some luchbox systems like the IPX. They are really well-built machines. Apart from NVRAM batteries that die, I have hardly any failures.
 
g4ugm said:
Harder is the keyboard and mouse which are special and as far as I know no adaptors exist for PC style keyboards.
Click to expand...

There are little boxes that let you use ps/2 keyboard and mice on Sun boxes. They aren't cheap though. They still go for almost $50 on ebay. Sun keyboard sets are so cheap might as well just buy one of those unless you are hooking it to a kvm switch or something.
 
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