4 ms·

History of SPARC systems from 1987

11 points by ohjeez 8y ago

nineteen999 8y ago
Back in the 1990's I worked for a company that I think was the few independent SPARC integrators in the southern hemisphere. We resold these units called Sparcplugs created by Ross Technologies in Austin, Texas: https://www.edn.com/electronics-news/4148519/ROSS-Technology-Introduces-SPARCplug-Motherboard-and-ASIC-Chip-Set-for-Embedded-Applications https://www.edn.com/electronics-news/4148519/ROSS-Technology... Kind of cool idea, you could plug a HyperSPARC motherboard into a 5.25" floppy bay of a PC. Never really took off though. We also did custom UltraSPARC 1/2 machines in custom enclosures for the HK MTR system which were used for monitoring air quality in the underground. We'd tested them for reliability by pushing the cabinets off a six foot drop in the loading bay of the warehouse to test whether they'd keep running in earthquake conditions. Fun times. Sparc might have had its warts and has obviously lost marketshare to the point where it's no longer really viable for the most part. But all through the 1990's Sun hardware was everywhere, and it was nice to have a relatively inexpensive alternative to Linux which was already making huge inroads especially into the lower end, eg. ISP's etc.
peter_d_sherman 8y ago
Excerpt: "the relatively low cost accessibility to semiconductor fabrication using gate arrays. Chip manufacturers who needed high volumes to recoup their capital investments of hundreds of millions of dollars (now billions) had figured out a way of producing standard product families of chips called gate arrays, which were identical except for the last few steps of the production process which defined the interconnections. This enabled computer systems companies to buy state of the art fabrication by effectively buying batches of wafers on a time-share basis from a few thousand dollars upwards, instead of the millions of dollars required previously."

4 ms·

History of SPARC systems from 1987

11 points by ohjeez 8y ago

nineteen999 8y ago
Back in the 1990's I worked for a company that I think was the few independent SPARC integrators in the southern hemisphere. We resold these units called Sparcplugs created by Ross Technologies in Austin, Texas: https://www.edn.com/electronics-news/4148519/ROSS-Technology-Introduces-SPARCplug-Motherboard-and-ASIC-Chip-Set-for-Embedded-Applications https://www.edn.com/electronics-news/4148519/ROSS-Technology... Kind of cool idea, you could plug a HyperSPARC motherboard into a 5.25" floppy bay of a PC. Never really took off though. We also did custom UltraSPARC 1/2 machines in custom enclosures for the HK MTR system which were used for monitoring air quality in the underground. We'd tested them for reliability by pushing the cabinets off a six foot drop in the loading bay of the warehouse to test whether they'd keep running in earthquake conditions. Fun times. Sparc might have had its warts and has obviously lost marketshare to the point where it's no longer really viable for the most part. But all through the 1990's Sun hardware was everywhere, and it was nice to have a relatively inexpensive alternative to Linux which was already making huge inroads especially into the lower end, eg. ISP's etc.
peter_d_sherman 8y ago
Excerpt: "the relatively low cost accessibility to semiconductor fabrication using gate arrays. Chip manufacturers who needed high volumes to recoup their capital investments of hundreds of millions of dollars (now billions) had figured out a way of producing standard product families of chips called gate arrays, which were identical except for the last few steps of the production process which defined the interconnections. This enabled computer systems companies to buy state of the art fabrication by effectively buying batches of wafers on a time-share basis from a few thousand dollars upwards, instead of the millions of dollars required previously."