SPARCstation 5 or
SS5 (code-named
Aurora) is a
workstationA workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems...
sold by
Sun MicrosystemsSun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982...
. It is based on the sun4m architecture, and is enclosed in a pizza-box chassis. A simplified, cheaper version of the SS5 was later released as the
SPARCstation 4The SPARCstation 4 was a computer workstation, a less expensive version of the SPARCstation 5, both manufactured by Sun Microsystems....
. Sun also marketed these same machines under the name "Netra" (Sun continues to sell new machines with this same name), which didn't include framebuffers or keyboards. The package was sold as "set-up and ready to go" webservers, preconfigured with all the requisite software.
CPU support
The SPARCstation 5 may incorporate one of the following processors: 70, 85, or 110 MHz Sun Microsystems
microSPARCThe microSPARC is a microprocessor implementing the SPARC V8 instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems. It was a low-end microprocessor intended for low-end workstations and embedded systems. The microprocessor was developed by Sun, but the floating-point unit was licensed from...
-II, or a 170 MHz Fujitsu Microelectronics, Inc. (FMI)
TurboSPARCThe TurboSPARC is a microprocessor that implements the SPARC V8 instruction set architecture developed by Fujitsu Microelectronics, Inc. , the United States subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited located in San Jose, California. It was a low-end microprocessor primarily developed as an upgrade for the Sun...
. Fujitsu also provided a 160 MHz TurboSPARC CPU Upgrade Kit for upgrading 70, 85 and 110 MHz microSPARC-II models. The SPARCstation 5 has no MBus and thus is limited to use as a single-processor machine.
Memory
The SPARCstation 5 has eight DSIMM slots for memory expansion. Slots can be filled individually with either 8Mb or 32Mb modules giving a maximum of 256Mb memory. The memory used is identical to that of the
SPARCstation 4The SPARCstation 4 was a computer workstation, a less expensive version of the SPARCstation 5, both manufactured by Sun Microsystems....
.
Disk drives
The SPARCstation 5 can hold two internal 80 pins, single ended, fast-narrow SCA SCSI drives, a SCSI CDROM and a floppy. It also supports external SCSI devices. There is no IDE/ATAPI support.
Network support
The SPARCstation 5 comes with an on-board AMD Lance
ethernetEthernet is a family of frame-based computer networking technologies for local area networks . The name comes from the physical concept of the ether...
chipset providing 10BaseT networking as standard and
10Base210BASE2 is a variant of Ethernet that uses thin coaxial cable , terminated with BNC connectors...
and
10Base510BASE5 is the original "full spec" variant of Ethernet cable, using special cable similar to RG-8/U coaxial cable. This is a stiff, diameter cable with an impedance of 50 ohms , a solid center conductor, a foam insulating filler, a shielding braid, and an outer jacket...
via an
AUIAn Attachment Unit Interface is a 15 pin connection that provides a path between a node's Ethernet interface and the Medium Attachment Unit , sometimes known as a transceiver. It is the part of the IEEE Ethernet standard located between the Media Access Control , and the MAU...
transceiver. A 10/100Mbit/s hme "Happy Meal" NIC can be added for faster connections. The OpenBoot ROM is able to boot from network, using RARP and TFTP. Like all other SPARCstation systems, the SS5 holds system information such as MAC address and serial number in NVRAM. If the battery on this chip dies, then the system will not be able to boot.
AFX
The SPARCstation 5 had three
SBUSSBus is a computer bus system that was used in most SPARC-based computers from Sun Microsystems and others during the 1990s...
expansion slots which are typical of Sun computer equipment of this era. The third of these shared its expansion backplate and physical space with a special
AFX connector which was unique to the SPARCstation 5. Only one card was released for this slot, known as the
S24 or
TCX. This was a framebuffer that allowed the use of 24-bit colour graphics instead of the eight bit colour of the SBUS
CG6 card, also known as the
LEGO or
low
end
graphics
option. The
TCX was also used as the on-board framebuffer of the SPARCstation 4, but this version was less advanced and only supported eight bit colour.
Operating systems
The following operating systems will run on a SPARCstation 5:
- SunOS
SunOS is a version of the Unix operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems. The SunOS name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4 of SunOS...
4.1.3_U1B onwards
- Solaris 2.3 Edition II to Solaris 9
- Linux
Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed,...
- Most distributions of Linux have compatibility issues with TurboSPARC variants
- MirBSD/sparc
- NetBSD
NetBSD is a freely redistributable, open source version of the Unix-derivative Berkeley Software Distribution computer operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed...
/sparc
- OpenBSD
OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD by project leader Theo de Raadt in late 1995...
/sparc
- NeXTSTEP
NeXTSTEP was the object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT Computer to run on its range of proprietary workstation computers, such as the NeXTcube, and later, other computer architectures.Nextstep 1.0 was released on September 18, 1989, after several previews starting in 1986...
Some but not all distribution still support this sparc32 sub-architecture.
External links