Leaded SolderAug 5, 2025
New blog post! I have finally gotten my '90 SparcStation 1+ workstation to do something useful, but a terrible price was asked in the process. Don't worry, the magic smoke came out of a *new* thing. #retrocomputing #retrounix #unix #sun #sparc #mame https://www.leadedsolder.com/2025/08/05/sparcstation-scsi-termination-fix-magic-smoke.html
A SPARC makes a little fire

Way back in May of 2018, I was unable to get the SparcStation 1+ to stop returning “Illegal Instruction” errors for any attempt at booting. This made absolutely no sense to anyone I asked about it, and they suggested replacing the PROM battery, because at least then we’d have fewer known-broken parts in the computer. I ignored this advice, and just stuck the computer in a corner with the other broken machines for awhile so it could think about what it did.

Leaded Solder
Show threadTim HolyoakeAug 5, 2025
@LeadedSolder I remember the first SparcStation 1 I bought for the company I worked at in 1989/90. It was a revelation compared to the 3/50s and 3/60s we were used to and comfortably beat the Apollo DN3000s for performance. In the space of 12 months we went from selling our software primarily on Apollo and Vaxstations to being 70%+ SparcStation. Our Sun account manager was unsurprisingly very happy with this turn of events, and the icing on the cake for him was HP buying Apollo, as they were never the same threat afterwards.
Show threadLeaded SolderAug 5, 2025

@psychotimmy Once upon a time, I supported these machines, but it was mostly the physical labour ("please put a stack of these in the cart in the cargo elevator.") Even when they were on the edge of obsolescence, it was obvious that they're pretty beefy. Some of them were replaced by SGIs, and others with Intergraph WinPCs.

The video is particularly impressive, I accidentally bought a TurboGX card that this thing needs a newer ROM to support, and I'm looking forward to hooking that up.

Show threadTim Holyoake
@LeadedSolder When I ran the sales support team at that company, we used to have to lug the very large and very heavy Sun monitors around with us to customer demonstrations (we developed and sold CAD/CAM packages, so bigger monitors and the best possible graphics cards were essential).
Aug 5, 2025 at 4:45pmWeb
Show threadLeaded SolderAug 5, 2025

@psychotimmy Yeah, I not-so-fondly remember having to haul those monitors around too :)

The Sun/Sony 21" is bigger around than my chest is, so I had to get creative with those. Still had those old-school '80s all-wood desks at the time, so they thankfully could take a little abuse.