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Sun Ultra 60 questions

T

tonata

Experienced Member
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Sep 11, 2019
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Hi,

I am thinking of acquiring a Sun Ultra 60 motherboard (only the motherboard). Is it possible to adapt an ATX power supply to power this motherboard? How is the standard used in Sun computers called?

The manual says:
DC output 350W (maximum)
Output 1 +3.3 Vdc, 50A
Output 2 +5.0 Vdc, 30A
Output 3 +12.0 Vdc, 5.0A
Output 4 -12.0 Vdc, 0.4A
Output 5 -12.0V, 0.3A

50A for the 3.3V seems like a lot? Maybe much less will do the job?
 
... I could maybe see doing this with an Ultra 5/10 motherboard, but this seems like a kind of sketchy idea for an Ultra 60? The Ultra 60's CPU modules slot into a little cage in the case with interlocking levers to secure everything, if you're just depending on the slot connector to hold them securely you might find yourself in a sad place. It also goes without saying that if you want to use the motherboard over anything but serial you'll need a UPA video card, the audio card... etc. I don't know where you're planning to buy the bare motherboard, but I would guess by the time you even buy CPU modules separately you could probably get a whole (probably untested, but whole) unit for the same price (or less) than the guts separately.

If you did just want something to use over serial you used to be able to get the rack-mounted servers that are basically the same thing (IE, like the Ultra 220R) for a song compared to the workstations, but I guess that was 15 years ago, they're no doubt all shockingly overpriced today.

Anyway, it wouldn't surprise me if the Ultra 60 needs a metric shedload of 3.3v. Those Ultrasparc II CPUs ran *hot*.
 
My question is why you only need the board. The problem is that in the last decade or so I've never seen *just* the board available for sale unless it was already in a scrap metal state, or for sale by the industrial parts depots who will make you pay for keeping a board like that on the shelf for the last 20 years.
At this point if you find aU60, it's gonna be in the case still.
 
The power connectors (plural) on the ultra 60 are completely different from the type of connector ATX uses. While you could make an adapter with enough effort I'm not sure if it's worth it. Also as pointed out above the CPUs are designed to be cooled by the air duct built into the case. The CPUs uses around 18 watts each and have no power management so you need some kind of cooling on them. If you have a lot of experience building heavily modified computer cases and doing electrical wiring this could be an interesting project, and it will be a project. But if not I'd recommend you buy a full machine.
 
tonata said:
50A for the 3.3V seems like a lot? Maybe much less will do the job?
Click to expand...
If you add all the numbers, you will see that it will be more than 350 watts in total. This is just what a voltage rail can deliver, but none of them is ever used at full load.

Also, you are not going to max-out the system with all the stuff you could add back then. So yes, less will certainly do the job.
 
Thank you.
I heard the original case is quite heavy. I had this idea of making a custom lighter thin horizontal case. Use Blue SCSI to reduce power consumption and smaller ATX adapted power supply to reduce size. Put or print Sun's logo on top. And put it in my living room as decoration ... :) It will be "a piece of art" for me in the end :)

17d4116384e3987045ede878d80ad7d8-_1_.jpg

But the thing is that it will be too complicated as you have pointed out: CPU cooling, adapting the power supply, buy an UPX video card. Is it possible to fit a riser card in order to fit the video card in the horizontal case?
I will see what else the seller can provide.
 
tonata said:
Is it possible to fit a riser card in order to fit the video card in the horizontal case?
Click to expand...

Have you seen how large the CPU modules are? They stick straight up. You can't stick that motherboard in a case much thinner than what it comes in.

I guess I'm kind of curious if you have much experience with Suns of this vintage. I kind of hate to be too harsh but... they're dogs. I mean, sure, when they were introduced in 1997 they were decently impressive and the models with the expensive version of the video card were used for some "exciting" applications like medical imaging and CAD, but industrial workstations like this aged fast... and I can't think of a single interesting thing to with one in your living room. Solaris is a notoriously slow-feeling OS and it is definitely not well suited for "fun" applications, so... why do you want one as a centerpiece?

Here's a bunch of benchmark numbers for a cross-platform scientific application; the table includes numbers for a "slow" and a "fast" Ultra 60, IE, 360mhz and 450mhz. The *nice* interpretation of these results is the UltraSPARC-II is actually was one of the better CPUs in terms of performance per clock; the 450mhz Ultra 60 is almost as fast a 900mhz PowerPC G4. (But it's *very* far from the best; a MIPS R10000/14000, PA-RISC, or Itanium CPU will absolutely wipe the floor with it in IPS.) Brass tacks: with dual CPUs the fastest an Ultra 60 is going to go is in the ballpark of an early Pentium 4 PC. And that's aggregate, IE, if you find an application that perfectly uses both CPUs. On a single CPU it's slower than a Pentium III laptop or an Atom Netbook... So, yeah, I guess I'm curious what the motivation is here.

If you just want a good-looking/stylish Sun box that's reasonably compact I personally have a soft spot for the Ultra 1. They're slower than dirt but their industrial design is dripping with charm. And, per above, "slower than dirt" is a state of mind. Realistically they're no more useless than an Ultra 60 today, both are landfill fodder that you could easily replace with a $25 Raspberry Pi 3 knockoff.
 
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OK I did not realize the CPU module is that big.
No, the idea is not to do anything useful. It is more of a show off of what was during this age. Just showing the old UI and some applications is cool enough for ... a retro geek I suppose. The idea is to demonstrate something for a few a minutes.
Yes, it is more about the aesthetics and preserving it.
 
tonata said:
No, the idea is not to do anything useful. It is more of a show off of what was during this age. Just showing the old UI and some applications is cool enough for ... a retro geek I suppose. The idea is to demonstrate something for a few a minutes.
Click to expand...

Did you have specific applications in mind? Because... yeah, I gotta be frank, I can't think of anything intrinsically interesting about this era of Sun workstation. Granted I'm at a disadvantage here because back when I was stuck actually interacting with these Solaris boxes regularly it was almost entirely as servers, but I did a stint for a few months at a company that issued them as standard engineering workstations, and in that capacity, well, they ran text-based software in xterms and Netscape Navigator. That's pretty much it. They will run ancient versions of Blender and similar applications if you really want to exercise the graphics card, but the results aren't going to impress anyone. (Again, about the best you can say is they were "pretty good" for 1998. Sun sold them until 2002, at which point they *well* past their best-by date.)

Maybe I'm the wrong one to ask. Over 20 years ago I *briefly* got excited about finally getting to touch "real" workstations, and ended up inheriting a few Suns and SGIs back when you could get them out of a garbage can for free if you knew where to look, but my enthusiasm for that died pretty fast once I actually had them. Unless you get an extremely high-end model most of these systems are slower than PCs just a couple years newer (in an extreme case, like an SGI with the bestest best graphics they offered, they might still be impressive compared to a PC, I dunno, maybe make it five years newer?), they're loud, they're power hungry, it's almost impossible to find "interesting" software for them (*many* commercial applications for these systems were locked down with dongles or license servers)... again, unless you have something very specific in mind that's going to make a computer that's completely put in the shade by just about any 2002-vintage PC running Linux look good I'd probably search elsewhere for an awesome example of late-90's tech to show off.

tonata said:
Yes, it is more about the aesthetics and preserving it.
Click to expand...

How are you "preserving" it if you're putting it in a completely different case? If you just want a weird case connected to a monitor running an X11/CDE you can run CDE on just about any vaguely UNIX-like OS, including Linux, and it'll look pretty indistinguishable from the default 1999-vintage Solaris 2.x desktop.

If you really just want to play with a Sun Workstation I'd probably recommend an Utra 1, 5, 10, or Blade 100, but only if you can get one cheap. The last three on that list are almost as fast as a single-CPU Ultra 60 except for having only 2d rated graphics cards (with the exception of the Creator 3D version of the Ultra 10), and they're at least less beastly. Bonus with the Blade 100 is it uses a USB keyboard and mouse, although you still want to have the *Sun* USB keyboard. (Any old USB mouse will be fine, though.) Then it at least will look like a Sun.
 
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Eudimorphodon said:
that you could easily replace with a $25 Raspberry Pi 3 knockoff
Click to expand...
I've got a pile of unix workstations and lately I've been running the 7zip benchmark on them as get them going again just because its relatively easy and quick to run and it gives a number I can compare. The results were initially quite shocking. I was not expecting the first generation Raspberry Pi to get a better score than a 333MHz Ultra 10, or for the Raspberry Pi 3 to get more than four times the score of the 1GHz Blade 1500. But of course its kind of an unfair comparison - the Raspberry Pi may be a small low power embedded thing, but it's also 10-20 years newer so of course it can achieve better performance.

Also, finding something interesting to actually do with these machines really is a bit of a challenge. As you've said, they don't really run any unique interesting software so once Solaris or whatever is installed there isn't much more to do with it. The SunPCi in the Ultra 10 is neat but its still really just something you setup, play around with for a bit, then get bored with. At the moment I mostly just use these machines for testing builds of C-Kermit for FdC.

The hardware itself is interesting though which is the main reason I keep them around, and it's sometimes interesting to mess around with a unix for an hour or two.
 
davidrg said:
I've got a pile of unix workstations and lately I've been running the 7zip benchmark on them as get them going again just because its relatively easy and quick to run and it gives a number I can compare. The results were initially quite shocking. I was not expecting the first generation Raspberry Pi to get a better score than a 333MHz Ultra 10, or for the Raspberry Pi 3 to get more than four times the score of the 1GHz Blade 1500. But of course its kind of an unfair comparison - the Raspberry Pi may be a small low power embedded thing, but it's also 10-20 years newer so of course it can achieve better performance.

Also, finding something interesting to actually do with these machines really is a bit of a challenge. As you've said, they don't really run any unique interesting software so once Solaris or whatever is installed there isn't much more to do with it. The SunPCi in the Ultra 10 is neat but its still really just something you setup, play around with for a bit, then get bored with. At the moment I mostly just use these machines for testing builds of C-Kermit for FdC.

The hardware itself is interesting though which is the main reason I keep them around, and it's sometimes interesting to mess around with a unix for an hour or two.
Click to expand...

The trouble is getting sw - personally i'm on lookout for Microstation and FRAME (and OSE etc.)

All is today and then U60 was current in the 4-5 digits price category, and why ? because maybe i want to compare late 90s sw to todays, maybe i dont like current Windows based version of them ?
 
davidrg said:
The hardware itself is interesting though which is the main reason I keep them around, and it's sometimes interesting to mess around with a unix for an hour or two.
Click to expand...

I have an Ultra 5 and 10 in my garage. (And a couple Sparcstation 5s... esh, I really should do something about that stuff.) Up to around a decade ago the Ultra 10 lived under my desk at the office and I'd turn it on once in a while to build the latest version of NetBSD on. (No good reason other than back around 2000 I worked for a NetBSD shop and it was kind of a tradition for people to have something weird on their desk. So... misplaced nostalgia.) I guess I'll say that it did still qualify as "interesting" at that point because it's kind of hard to find much slower 64 bit systems. It was kind of exciting when NetBSD actually got X working on them, I suppose.

(For Suns you have the original Ultra 1, but the slowest UltraSparc CPUs have a severe CPU bug that makes it impossible to *securely* run a 64 bit OS on them; SUN limited them to 32 bit mode in Solaris unless you did a specific override. For "not Sun" there are DEC Alphas, a few MIPS CPUs, and a couple early IBM POWER workstations that are definitively slower than an UltraSparc IIi, but it's a pretty exclusive club.)

Performancewise I was kind of surprised to discover, at one point where I went through a phase where I was running the ancient floating point benchmark "flops.c" on everything I could lay hands on, that the floating point performance of the Ultrasparc IIi was actually pretty good, in the sense that per clock it really did solidly beat a PowerPC G4 Macintosh. (But, eh, I dunno, maybe that's more of a measure of how overrated the G4 was? A Pentium III basically tied with it, apparently the only thing it was uniquely good at were those AltiVec matrix operations that like three specific photoshop filters used.) They always felt so uniquely slow and terrible running Solaris, but in benchmarks like that or under NetBSD they were... fine? for their age. But yeah, hopelessly slow now, or even in 2007 or so.

Part of me wants to try dusting it off and seeing if it still fires up, but I'm guessing that all of them have dead Dallas clock batteries by now. But I don't *know* they're dead if I don't try, right?
 
davidrg said:
I've got a pile of unix workstations and lately I've been running the 7zip benchmark on them as get them going again just because its relatively easy and quick to run and it gives a number I can compare. The results were initially quite shocking. I was not expecting the first generation Raspberry Pi to get a better score than a 333MHz Ultra 10, or for the Raspberry Pi 3 to get more than four times the score of the 1GHz Blade 1500. But of course its kind of an unfair comparison - the Raspberry Pi may be a small low power embedded thing, but it's also 10-20 years newer so of course it can achieve better performance.

Also, finding something interesting to actually do with these machines really is a bit of a challenge. As you've said, they don't really run any unique interesting software so once Solaris or whatever is installed there isn't much more to do with it. The SunPCi in the Ultra 10 is neat but its still really just something you setup, play around with for a bit, then get bored with. At the moment I mostly just use these machines for testing builds of C-Kermit for FdC.

The hardware itself is interesting though which is the main reason I keep them around, and it's sometimes interesting to mess around with a unix for an hour or two.
Click to expand...
Are there any repositories of Solaris programs? I've always wanted to try some ancient unix CAD/simulation programs.
 
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