My Sun 3/60 Workstations

Marian

Sun 3/60 Workstation (8/1988)

Wide pizza box
- ?? Watt Power Supply
- 54*44*8 cm
Processors
- Motorola 68020 CPU @ 20MHz
- Motorola 68881 FPU @ 20MHz
- Sun-3 MMU with 8 hardware contexts
P4 bus
16MB RAM = 16 1MB 30 pins SIMMS 100ns
Max 24MB physical, 256MB virtual, 200ns cycle
Video
- cgfour frame buffer 1MB
- P4 bus
- 1152*900
- 10 bit (8bit color + 1bit mono + 1 bit enable plane)
- 66.7Hz
Onboard SCSI
Onboard 10mbit/s Ethernet (Thin coax and AUI)
Type 3 keyboard
Type 3 optical mouse (from Mouse Systems)
Monitor
- 19" (vis) Hitach HM-4119-S-AA-0
- 1152*900
- Fixed frequency 68KHz H & 66.7Hz V
- 5 BNC connectors
Seth Robertson's SunOs 4.1.1 based Xkernel

Marion †

Sun 3/60 Workstation (7/1988)

Wide pizza box
- ?? Watt Power Supply
- 54*44*8 cm
Processors
- Motorola 68020 CPU @ 20MHz
- Motorola 68881 FPU @ 20MHz
- Sun-3 MMU with 8 hardware contexts
P4 bus
0MB RAM
Max 24MB physical, 256MB virtual, 200ns cycle
Video
- bwtwo frame buffer 128K(?)
- Onboard
- 1600*1100 or 1152*900
- 1 bit mono
- 66Hz V & 61.8Hz H
Onboard SCSI
Onboard 10mbit/s Ethernet (Thin coax and AUI)
No keyboard! Donate me type 3 or 4
No mouse! Donate me type 3 or 4
No Monitor! Donate me...

In may 99 I received these 2 Sun 3/60 workstations virtually for free. Thanks Julien!
Beside this, I received:

SunOS 4.1.1 and Openwindows version 2 on 1/4" tapes

Esmerald (Exabyte) tapestreamer 8mm (doesn't read the SunOS tapes and doesn't open...)

2 170 MB SCSI(?) hardisks

Sun SCSI 530-1435-04 cable (doesn't fit on the tape streamer or disks...)

So, what's cool about these 11 years old beasts?
- Well, they were top of the art workstations when they were introduced (codename was Ferrari) and they costed $9450 (which - I guess - was the price for the base mono 4MB model without screen).
- Admitted, they seem now awfull slow (sure compared with my PIII500), but they still have many modern features:
  - First obvious thing is the high resolution color 19" screen.
  - Besides SunOS 4.1.1 they run recent versions of Linux and BSD, which enable them to run all kinds of recent software.
  - Optical mouse without moving parts. Still working after 11 years!
  - Dual head possibility. (When I find the mono monitor, I'll move the color frame buffer to the machine with the onboard mono frame buffer and I've got 2 monitors on 1 machine!)
  - Onboard ethernet and SCSI
  - Booting possible from disks, tape, CD and network
  - Incredible solid. Heavy metal case under the plastic, probably survives jumping on it and nuclear blast.
  - 8 diagnostic LEDs (testing without monitor, terminal or keyboard)
  - Possibility to use serial terminals instead of monitor and keyboard
- To put things in their context: around 1988 I was using:
  - 10Mhz 8086 / 640K RAM / 640*480*16 VGA & 320*200*256 MCGA (which I found exceptional) / 13" (?) monitor
  - 10Mhz 80286 + 80287 / 1MB RAM / 640*350*16 EGA / 13" vis monitor
So, what can you still use them for?
- First of all, Marion will serve as spare for Marian, unless somebody donates me the mono monitor ;-)
- They are too slow to use them interactively while running a complete operating system, but they can be extremely usefull as X-terminal.
  Marian boots Seth Robertson's SunOs 4.1.1 based Xkernel from my Linux server Joyce.
  Like this, Marian can display applications running on Joyce or any other UNIX machine. Since Joyce is permanently connected to the internet, Marian is a nice extra surfing station.
  Displaying Joyce's applications on Joyce (=486DX66; sorry, PIII500 runs M$ Winblows) or on Marian doesn't seem to make any speed difference.
How to use Xkernel on a Sun 3/60 from Redhat 5.0
...

Creation Frederik Questier 21-May-99

Last Update Frederik Questier 08-Aug-99

hits on this page since 21-May-99

hits on all pages since 24-Oct-95

Creation	Frederik Questier	21-May-99
Last Update	Frederik Questier	08-Aug-99
	hits on this page since	21-May-99
	hits on all pages since	24-Oct-95

My Sun 3/60 Workstations

So, what's cool about these 11 years old beasts?

So, what can you still use them for?

How to use Xkernel on a Sun 3/60 from Redhat 5.0