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Sun Blade 1000 - how to max out?

E

edaustin

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Mar 27, 2024
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So, I have a Blade 150... dual 80GB drives and 1.5GB RAM running OpenBSD 7.6 but as you would appreciate it is slow, compiling rust programs that use many libraries ("crates") is very very slow (and often aborts due to various issues that I have yet to troubleshoot) so decided to upgrade to a "newer" (well it is actually chronologically older by 2 years) Sun Blade 1000. The 150 has been great as a low power, low noise BSD box but is very limiting in use when compiling stuff due to a single 650MHZ USIIi.

The B1000 is coming in a few days.. spec unknown but is a Dual CPU and likely has 2GB minimum, as well as 2 x 10K FCAL drives and what he says is a basic ATI card (XVR-300?). It is *FULL* of dust (and I even saw a spider crawling up the outside of one of the CPU's in images!!!) and looks like it hasn't been used for at least a decade.... he did say untested from a company clearance but the power light eventually goes steady green when he powered it up (to me indicates it gets to the OBP stage past diagnostics so could well be OK).

First step a THOROUGH clean!

From what I can gather the best way to max out this machine is:

1. Upgrade OBP firmware (if Mobo revision allows)
2. Two faster CPU's, the 1.2GHZ "Cu" versions would then be possible if firmware permits
3. 8GB RAM (is 16GB possible?)
4. LSI SAS3080X-R PCI-X card will allow large fast SSD's (it does on the 1500/2500 so perhaps the 1000/2000 as well?)
5. XVR-1000 card (*but* they are far more expensive than the machine itself... this may need to wait).

I am going to use as my daily driver (is OK in some respects as I use latest OpenBSD, xfce and VIM which are lightweight) - I expect the browsers to struggle though but I will see if I can sort that issue out.

Any other tips or advice to turbo-charge this "beast" (it is a beast of a machine for sure!).
 
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The XVR-1000 is not a good card at all. It barely supports OpenGL properly and has a lot of problems running some programs. It's a technological oddity that Sun forced out the door just to get rid of. It's only noteworthy aspects are that it's the last graphics card Sun designed and the last UPA card released. It's more of a collectors item than an actual useful piece of hardware.

If you're looking for good 3d performance I'd recommend an XVR-600 which I've seen for as low as $30 on ebay, or an XVR-1200 which you can sometimes find for cheap. An Expert3D or an XVR-500 are also good options and more historically accurate.
 
Thanks. Yes I recall the card needs both UPA and PCI dual slot!

This is interesting.

Michael Frank Deering: Hardware: FFB3/XVR-1000

Description of XVR-1000 product
www.michaelfrankdeering.com

I will amend my search and attempt to find an XVR-1200, failing that an XVR-600.

Not worried about historically accuracy so much for the video, I'd gladly use the best PCI-X card possible if it were not too expensive and available.
 
Make sure you create a lot of swap space when installing - Rust can easily use 16GB of RAM when compiling projects, so, there may be a large amount of swapping, even if you have 8GB of RAM installed.
 
I think I have to change my recommendation for a graphics card. Since you were talking about an XVR-1000 I assumed you'd be running Solaris since that's the only thing that supports it. But after reading your post again I see that you're going to run OpenBSD. In which case your only options are Creator3D, Elite3D, XVR-100 ( what the machine probably has), since they are the only cards with open source drivers. If you want 3d support the XVR-100 or a modded Mac card are your only options but I doubt the drivers have been tested much on sparc.
 
Thanks for the excellent advice guys.

Make sure you create a lot of swap space when installing - Rust can easily use 16GB of RAM when compiling projects, so, there may be a large amount of swapping, even if you have 8GB of RAM installed.

Think I will need to upgrade the RAM, I've seen 16GB is possible, I'll try,

Creator3D, Elite3D, XVR-100 ( what the machine probably has),

Yes, you are dead on.... came with an XVR-100.

So far....

So the machine arrived (with HUGE dust issues I am cleaning away), it powers on OK and I can get to the OBP (which is a relief), the FCAL drives have not yet arrived as were sent separately, I booted OpenBSD off the CD drive and it stated was a "Schizo 1.0" board, so probably an early board.

Good news is dual CPU's which I removed, cleaned dust, torqued back in - not sure of speed though but I suspect the slowest.

Also RAM Issue?


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Can't find any net references to this RAM unfortunately.


20241129_135309.jpg



System on boot (with a TYPE 6 USB keyboard) up says though 512MB RAM.... (and a USB issue, although the keyboard seems to work fine)


20241129_134031.jpg


I will need to troubleshoot as I am sure the RAM is greater than 512MB unless they are 64MB modules....

Sun sure knew how to make hardware this is an absolute monster of a workstation. I used to own a Blade 1500 Red, and that was nowhere near this in sheer presence.
 
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Are the rear USB sockets okay? Since this was a deskside machine the cables plugged into the sockets tended to get kicked by users and could break quite easily. Oh and BTW when upgrading your memory modules try to get the same size in the two banks. The machine interleaves the modules in two directions, I remember being caught out by increasing the ram modules only to find the machines ran slower.
 
The machine came packaged not really well but adequate I guess - one of the RAM modules was even dislodged so it must have had a rough journey.... however it seems still intact - they are built pretty well it seems.

I'm plugging the Sun keyboard into one of the rear USB sockets, when I get home I'll check if it has become loose.

I will also take out all the RAM tonight and check it out... it is very likely though I will have to upgrade it to 8/16GB as a first step, but thanks for that advice as I will use it when buying RAM!

The RAM, esp. 2GB modules are hard to find, and not cheap, also not sure they will be compatible.
 
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Ah thanks.

I think the Dataram was faulty as using just these four modules alone in Bank 0 gave me four beeps and no boot up. Replacing them with the Samsung 128MB modules gives me 512MB when used in Bank 0 after I swapped them over and no beeps/errors.

I also found out the CPU's were 750MHZ each. Next steps, install OpenBSD on one of the (72GB/10K) FCAL drives when they arrive. If this goes smoothly I will upgrade the RAM and eventually upgrade the CPU's and put in a SAS card. The final topping of the cake will be a Sun CRT 22 inch monitor from the early 00's.

Often I wonder why exactly I am doing this, exactly everyone I know thinks I'm insane spending huge amounts of time with a quarter of a century almost old machines but I can't help myself.
 
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