Thanks to a good friend who was thinking of my love for older Sun Microsystems hardware, I now have a few more SPARC based systems to add to my stable of computers!  I have gained a two more SPARCStation 20 systems (both dual CPU), two more SPARCStation 5 systems, and a SunBlade 100.

None of the systems came with RAM, so I’ll have to hit eBay and locate some used memory.

What to do with these systems?  I really need to get some kind of FreeNAS system online, and perform network based booting with all the SPARCs.  I have plenty of Fast Ethernet SBUS adapters, so I won’t be limited to 10Mbit/s for “disk” traffic.  I dare say, running off of a modern NAS setup may even be faster than most of my SPARC systems’ onboard SCSI interfaces.  It would be nice to not have to deal with old SCSI drives, the added power consumption, and the added heat as well.

With all that said, I’m considering moving this site onto a NetBSD platform, based off of the SPARC hardware.  Should be an interesting diversion from things at work, and give me some opportunities to pick up more scripting and possibly programming.

More updates to come as I play around with the hardware!  If anyone out there has RAM for SS5, SS20, Ultra2, or SunBlade 100 systems, and you’d like to donate to the cause, please let me know!