From: earle@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov (Greg Earle - Gainfully Unemployed)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.hardware,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Old Sun question - HELP!!!!!
Date: 6 Jan 93 11:52:53 GMT
Article-I.D.: elroy.1993Jan6.115253.19572
Followup-To: comp.sys.sun.hardware
Organization: Gainfully unemployed

In article <rcaldwel.726296968@ponder> rcaldwel@ponder.csci.unt.edu (Roger Caldwell) writes:
>I have a old Sun Microsystems machine, model number Sun-2/120
>
>Could some kind soul PLEASE tell me what I have, is it good for anything.

You have a 2nd-generation Sun Workstation, dating from late 1983.  Welcome to
9+ year old hardware technology.

It also contains a bus called the MultiBus (remember those?).  There are
several (9) Multibus slots available inside the machine; one of those is used
for the CPU board, 1 (or more) slots is used for main memory, and the other
slots are free for things like a Xylogics SMD disk controller, 3Com (or Sun)
Ethernet Controller, Sun Color Video Board, Sun-2 (Mono) Video Board, SCSI
board (which also contained 4 extra serial ports, in addition to the SCSI), a
Ciprico Tapemaster 9-track 1/2" tape controller board, Sky Floating Point
coprocessor board, and a couple of tape drive controller boards (Adaptec ACB
4000 and Sysgen SC-4000).  A common high-end configuration would have been:

Slot	Contents
----	--------
 1	Sun-2 CPU board
 2	Sun-2 1 Mbyte Main Memory
 3	Sun-2 1 Mbyte memory expansion card
 4	Sun-2 Ethernet board (or 3Com)
 5	Sun-2 SCSI Host Adapter
 6	Sun-2 Video
 7	Xylogics 450 SMD disk controller board
 8	Sky Floating Point Processor board
 9	Sun Color Video Controller

The memory boards have to be adjacent to the CPU board in slot 1, and they
can go in slots 2, 3, 4 and 5, yielding a maximum of 4 Mb.

Your Sun-2/120 contains a Motorola MC68010 processor, running at 10 (?) MHz.

This makes it slower than a snail.  The latest operating system available
from Sun that supports this system is SunOS 4.0.3, which is now 6 O/S
releases behind the current O/S release available for the SPARC-based systems.
Welcome to 3+ year old software technology.  In addition, it is dreadfully
slow, and unless you have gobs of memory, a better choice would be to attempt
to find a copy of SunOS 3.5(.2), Sun's last 4.2BSD-based O/S (SunOS 4.0 and
releases up to and including SunOS 4.1.3 started to base itself on 4.3BSD.).
SunOS 3.5(.2) will run noticably faster on the Sun-2/120.

About the only thing your Sun-2/120 system shares in common with modern Suns
is (a) the screen resolution is still the same (1152x900), unbelievably; and
(b) they BOTH USE THE SAME GOD-D*MNED !*&$@%$&^% SERIAL PORTS, utilizing
Zilog Z8530 dual UART chips!

In early 1985, I thought the Sun-2/120 on/under my desk was that cat's meow.
It is now 8 years later, and the best use of a Sun-2/120 that I can think of
is as a Floor Heater for people in cold climates with inadequate heating
systems (-:

Basically, any modern PC will run rings around your old, tired warhorse.
Seriously, ditch it and get a 486DX2/66 or 486DX/50-based PC clone system and
run 386BSD (4.3BSD++ based) on it instead.  Send your Sun-2/120 to a museum ...

--
	- Greg Earle
	  Itinerant Sun Consultant
	  isolar!earle@elroy.JPL.NASA.GOV
	  (818) 353-8695
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.hardware