SPARCstation 4
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer hardware |
| Founded | February 24, 1982 in Santa Clara, California, United States |
| Founder | Vinod Khosla, Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott McNealy, Bill Joy |
| Headquarters | Santa Clara, California , United States |
| Products | Workstations, servers, software |
| Website | www |
SPARCstation 5 (internally referred to as Aurora) is a workstation developed by Sun Microsystems as part of the SPARCstation lineup. Introduced on March 29, 1994, its price ranged from US$3,995 to US$11,395 (approximately $18,495–$57,995 when adjusted for inflation). Designed as an affordable successor to the 1992 SPARCclassic, it utilizes the sun4m architecture and features a compact pizza-box style enclosure. Additionally, Sun released a SPARCserver 5 model that omitted the framebuffer.
A more basic variant, the SPARCstation 4, was launched in February 1995. Both models were also sold under the "Netra" brand as turnkey web server systems without framebuffers or keyboards. The SPARCstation 5 quickly became the best-selling Unix workstation of its era, moving 100,000 units within nine months and surpassing 400,000 units over its production span. It was succeeded by the Ultra 5 in January 1998.
CPU support
The SPARCstation 5 accommodates Sun Microsystems microSPARC-II CPUs running at 70, 85, or 110 MHz, as well as a 170 MHz Fujitsu Microelectronics (FMI) TurboSPARC. For earlier microSPARC-II variants, Fujitsu provided a 160 MHz TurboSPARC CPU upgrade kit. Since it lacks an MBus slot, this system functions exclusively as a single-processor workstation.
Memory
Equipped with eight DSIMM slots, the system supports memory modules of either 8 MB or 32 MB, allowing for a maximum capacity of 256 MB—matching the memory setup found in the SPARCstation 4.
Disk drives
Internally, it supports two fast-narrow SCSI drives using 80-pin SCA connectors. The configuration also includes support for a SCSI CD-ROM drive and floppy drive, along with compatibility for external SCSI peripherals. IDE/ATAPI interfaces are not supported.
Network support
Networking capabilities come standard via an integrated AMD Lance ethernet chipset providing 10BASE-T connectivity. Additional network options include 10BASE2 and 10BASE5 through an AUI transceiver. An upgrade path exists for a higher-speed 10/100 Mbit/s hme network interface card. The OpenBoot firmware enables network booting using RARP and TFTP protocols. Critical system information such as MAC address and serial number is maintained in NVRAM; if the battery fails, reprogramming NVRAM is necessary prior to startup.
Expansion / AFX
Standard for Sun hardware at the time, the SPARCstation 5 provides three SBus expansion slots. The third slot is shared with a specialized AFX connector designed exclusively for the S24 or TCX framebuffer cards to deliver enhanced 24-bit color graphics—an improvement over the default 8-bit SBus CG6 (LEGO) graphics card.
SPARCstation 4
Introduced on February 6, 1995, the SPARCstation 4 (code-named Perigee) was priced at US$3,995 and intended to replace the SPARCclassic. It shares the same microSPARC-II processors operating at 70, 85, or 110 MHz as found in the SPARCstation 5 but offers only one SBus expansion slot compared to three on its counterpart. Storage includes a single 1.05 GB hard disk drive while memory capacity tops out at 160 MB distributed over five DSIMM slots. Unlike the integrated audio of the SPARCstation 5, audio functionality on this model requires an optional module inserted into its dedicated slot.
Graphics are managed by an onboard pixel-accelerated adapter (TCX) supporting up to 8-bit color depth with resolutions reaching 1152×900 pixels—or up to 1280×1024 when paired with an optional VSIMM module. A cost-effective 17-inch display was offered as an alternative monitor option. Notably, this system does not include the AFX graphics interface present on the SPARCstation 5.
Ethernet connectivity is provided through a standard AUI connector on the SPARCstation 4, contrasting with the non-standard connector requiring specialized cabling found on the SPARCstation 5.
This model marked the last release in the SPARCstation line before Sun transitioned to their Ultra series of UltraSPARC-based workstations in November 1995.
SPARC Xterminal 1
The SPARC Xterminal 1 utilized the identical casing as the SPARCstation 4 and was promoted as an X terminal that lacked any onboard storage. In contrast to the earlier SPARCclassic X, it incorporated a less powerful 50 MHz microSPARC CPU and allowed memory upgrades ranging from 8 MB up to 128 MB through four DSIMM slots, whereas the workstation supported up to 160 MB.
Rather than running Solaris, both the SPARC Xterminal 1 and SPARCclassic X depended on specialized software loaded over the network.
Sun provided an upgrade package that transformed the terminal into a complete workstation by replacing the motherboard with one from a SPARCstation 4, adding a hard disk, and increasing memory capacity.
Operating systems
The SPARCstation 5 is compatible with:
- SunOS starting from version 4.1.3_U1B
- Solaris editions ranging from 2.3 Edition II through Solaris 9
- Linux - although TurboSPARC models exhibit compatibility challenges
- MirBSD/sparc
- NetBSD/sparc
- OpenBSD/sparc
- NeXTSTEP - unsupported on TurboSPARC variants
- OPENSTEP/Mach - TurboSPARC variants are not supported
External links
- Obsolyte: SPARCstation 5
- Parts List for SPARCstation 5
- "Sun AFX bus speeds graphics", article discussing AFX bus and graphics cards in Electronic News