3 ms·
I’ve been loving the 90’s computing nostalgia theme on HN lately - keep it coming. Sun are obviously best known for their Sparc systems, but their x86 workstat
by greggsy 5y ago
I’ve been loving the 90’s computing nostalgia theme on HN lately - keep it coming.
Sun are obviously best known for their Sparc systems, but their x86 workstations were beautiful and well ahead of their time in terms of serviceability. The classic design would still look modern today.
- panick21_ 5y agoAs somebody to young for this, what x86 workstation are you referring to?
- scrlk 5y agoIn the mid-00s, Sun started building x86 workstations using AMD Opteron CPUs when they were trouncing any Intel chip. The Ultra 2x/4x series looked great: http://freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/ultra_20m2/ http://freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/ultra_20m2/ IMO the best implementation of the design came in the SPARC versions where the optical drive and IO were combined in to one 5.25" bay (e.g. Ultra 25, pg 4: http://archives.retrobridge.org/sun/system-handbook/3.4/Systems/Ultra25_shared/documents/Ultra25_Ultra45_JTF.pdf http://archives.retrobridge.org/sun/system-handbook/3.4/Syst...).
- panick21_ 5y agoI knew about the AMD Server but I didn't know they had Workstations too. These to look pretty awesome.
- awiesenhofer 5y agoOh wow, didn't know these were a thing! They look great, now I kinda want one, haha. Though I wonder, who bought these over similar Dell/HP/etc boxes? Did they have any special features or was it mostly just about them running Solaris first-party?
- greggsy 5y agoYep, I had an Ultra 20 opteron. Nice machine.
- euroderf 5y agoAny thoughts on how (un-)competitive was the AT&T series (3B2 3B5 etc.) ?