PROJECTS: E3 Hardware: Sun
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::: SUN UltraSparc 5 SparcStation 20->10* SparcStation 10->20 SparcStation 20 Voyager |
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Sun Ultra 5: Caliban
``Caliban'' is a Sun UltraSparc 5 (64-bit RISC processor) with 384MiB of RAM and an 8GiB IDE harddrive, running FreeBSD -CURRENT. Lots of RAM helps performance quite a bit by giving more room for file caching ... the built-in IDE interface on the Sparc 5 is horribly bogus. Here's a note I originally sent to the FreeBSD Sparc64 mailing list in May of 2004:
In my tests it's not the CPU in the Ultra5 that makes buildworld slow, it's the IDE interface that must've been designed by Lucas[1]. Adding memory helps simply because it lets the file cache stand a chance, though I don't believe the buildworld process re-uses nearly as many files as, say, a production web server. There are two things I've tried to alleviate the slow disk I/O: * I tried using an Ultra SCSI card and drive. This helps immensely, but I needed the card for another box. * I mount /usr/obj, /usr/src and /usr/ports off another box. With a bit of NFS tuning, I went from around 2MB/s to around 8MB/s Seriously, by NFS mounting the filesystems needed to buildworld, I drastically speed them up as compared to local disk. "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." -J. B. S. Haldane seems oddly appropriate ;-) -T 1. Collectors of classic British motorcycles will know what I'm talking about. Lucas designed electrical systems, including lights. They were often nicknaemd "Lucas, the Prince of Darkness" (a great pun)
Sun SparcStation 20->10: Ares
``Ares'' was a Sun SparcStation 20 with 64MiB of RAM, dual 50MHz 32-bit Sparc CPUs with 1MiB of cache each running NetbSD 2.0.2. It eventually became a SparcStation 10 (explained below). It originally had an original SCA SCSI Seagate ST31200W 1GiB harddrive, but it proved to be overly noisy (an second drive of an identical model was also excessively noisy) and so was swapped for an IBM 7200RPM 4.51GiB drive. It has a large Sun-branded monochrome fixed-frequency monitor, which gives exceedingly clear text. Brad and I put it together out of our collective sparc Sparc bits for a friend of ours.
Here's a generic picture of a SparcStation 20:
Note that, while it looks similar to a SparcStation 10, the cases are in fact different and the internals are very different. Thus I couldn't raid this box for it's power supply or hard drive when the one in Surya died. However, the important bits (mbus and sbus cards) are indeed swappable, and we ended up swapping cases with Utu. Thus, while Ares is labelled a SparcStation 20, that's only true from a historical perspective ;-)
Sun SparcStation 10->20: Utu
``Utu'' was a Sun SparcStation 10 that became a SparcStation 20. It has 128MiB of RAM, dual ROSS HyperSparc 125s, and an 18GiB IBM SCA SCSI drive running NetBSD 2.0. Along with a SunSwift card and a 7-bay DEC JBOD (with 718GB drives), it acts as an NFS fileserver.
The SparcStation 10 case doesn't normally use SCA SCSI (it uses 50-pin SCSI), and so I had to use an adapter on the drive. The adapter made the drive too "long" ... the case would no longer close properly. That causes heat problems, vaguely fixed by the little fans set next to the hard drive that I added. I eventually swapped the case for a SparcStation 20 one that originally belonged to Ares, which has native SCA. The mbus and sbus modules moved over easily.
I took some pictures of the box back when it was a SparcStation 10 and had
the dual HyperSparc 90s instead of the 125s:
As well as the color Sun monitor that I use for all my Sun gear:
There are more pictures and hardware details on a SS20 at this hobbyists site.
Sun SparcStation 10: Surya
``Surya'' is a Sun SparcStation 20 (32-bit RISC processor) with 128MiB of RAM, dual ROSS HyperSparc 90s, and a SCSI Seagate ST34520N 4.3GiB harddrive, running NETBSD2.0-beta. I have a Iomega Jazz drive hooked up to the external SCSI port to handle backups. Surya acts as my primary Kerberos KDC (for which it is surely overkill).
Here's a picture of Surya in one of cheap wooden "racks":
Surya was my first 32-bit Sun workstation, and the name began life attached to a SparcStation 10. The first Surya had it's power supply die in January of 2005. I moved the hard drive over to a SparcStation 20 that I had acquired (with better specs, too!) and Surya lived again. Thanks to Mark C. from the netbsd-sparc@ email list, who graciously offered me a spare SS10 power supply he had, I had the original SparcStation 10 up and running again, where it first served as Utu and then as Ares.
There's some technical details on the SS10 at Obsolyte, including a very important airflow diagram (these things get hot with multiple CPUs!) and some notes on visually identify the various mbus CPU modules.
There's a great guide to mbus CPUs in general at sunhelp.
There's a great page on the SS5 (which uses the same case as the SS20) with includes some pictures of a case mod to add some much-needed fans for cooling.
Sun Voyager
``Arvak'' is a Sun Voyager, currently running Solaris 2.7. This is one weird duck. There's some details at Milestone Solutions. I don't have a picture of Arvak, but here's what a generic Voyager looks like:
The 2.5 inch internal SCSI disk on Arvak died so I'm using an external Sun disk enclosure with a 1GB drive. There's pictures of the same model of enclosure at this hobbyists site.
Folks running Solaris might find the Community SoftWare site useful. It has binary packages of commonly used open source software, ready to "pkg-get install foo" and go.
