Peter's Sun3 Zoo

What's New - chronologically sorted
History of the Sun3 Series - How it happened
The Zoo - with lots of nice pictures
Spare Parts - and even more pictures
Tips and Tricks - Docs of Hard- and Software
Location - Where is the Sun3-Zoo?
Links - Other Sun3 related stuff on the Net

What's New

May 01. 2010 - Ending

Dear friends!

I have to give up my collection!

So if you want to have some pieces or know someone who might be interested, send me an e-mail.

Oct 27. 2007 - Linux

For years we heared: Linux on the desktop is coming. But if you work with PCs every day you know: Windows might not be all the best, but it does work somehow.

I can say i am able to use Linux, MacOS, Unix and Windows equally well. And i can decide what combination of hardware, software and operating system is suitable for which task. My PowerMac G4 Cube runs MacOS X, my server runs Solaris, my older PCs and closet servers run Linux. But my newer PCs run Windows 2000 or XP. From time to time i try to make Linux work on 'em - during partitioning i always leave enough room for it - but it was never the first choice yet.

My one year old Acer Travelmate is especially challenging. Immediately after buying i tried SuSE 9.3, later 10.1 and 10.2. But the experience ranged from interesting to annoying. The sound did not work, then no WLAN and the graphics was 1024x768 despite the fact, that the screen is capable of 1280x800. With 10.1 i nearly made the graphics work but after some restarts the screen went and stayed dark. Eventually i gave up.

Windows XP was frustrating too: After half a year i downgraded to Windows 2000 which ran ok so far.

But yesterday evening i had an encounter of a different kind. OpenSuSE 10.3 was attached to the c't magazine. Of course i tried it and what shall i say: after on hour of installation and two hours of configuration everything important was working!

Graphics displayed out of the box at 1280x800. WLAN was gorgeous - as comfortable as on Windows. Sound and suspend to disk run without a hitch. And the multimedia stuff was not more than selecting the community repositories of VideoLan and Packman and installing some packets. Then my mp3s would play fine and i was able to watch my Online TV-Recorder movies.

Here is the short list of the additionally installed packets:

VLC

mplayer

w32codec-all

There are a lot of other dependent packets necessary, but this is as easy as nodding one klick through. With SuSE 10.2 you had to fiddle with YUM and summon libdvdcss from elsewhere but now everything works from within YAST.

I'd like to urge all sceptics: Try it yourself. IMHO Linux on the Desktop has arrived!

Apr 04. 2006 - New Binaries

Martin Etteldorf tortured his Sun3/80 for days and brought us a wealth of new software binaries.

Apr 02. 2006 - Install SunOS-4.1.1_U1 without a tape drive

This tiny HOWTO written by Martin Etteldorf describes how to install the U1-Patch without a tape drive.

Mar 30. 2006 - Sun3-Archive is back

Heiko got his Sun3-Archive back online!

Oct 30. 2005 - Sun3 emulator tme

Matt Fredette has programmed this beautiful Sun2 and Sun3 emulator tme . Now i found some spare time to play with it.

It is still version 0.4 so one shouldn't expect too much from it, but i was astonished how far i came. I'd suggest that Matt should set up a FAQ so other people won't stumble over the same hurdles i did.

Ok, i can give some tips here.

Jun 05. 2005 - Sun3/3x-Archive

The Sun3/3x-Archive is offline for months now and so i decided to make my private mirror available here .
Unfortunately no PHP-includes or scripts are working! This affects all pages (missing header and footer), the search page and several other things. But please gimme an e-Mail, if something is still broken that is supposed to be working.

I just aquired an Ultra Enterprise 450... just for all you guys outside wondering what i am doing now. My focus has been on older SPARC machines recently and the E450 is my first Ultra class Sun4. But i have a lot more: From an original Sparc 1 over the 1+ to the SS2, from the SLC and ELC to the IPC, IPX, Classic and LC, from the SS10 and SS20 to the SS5 and SS4 and even two 4/260, one 4/370 and a 4/600 found their way to my realm in the meantime.

May 13. 2004 - Misc

Some months have passed and i didn't find the time to write anything. But some things have happened: Dennis Grevenstein gave me all his Sun3 and Sun-VME equipment. And i sent some server boards to Sun and i hope they can and will repair them.

Nov 3. 2003 - DNS update

I JUST wanted to shut down NIS (YP) on www.sun3zoo.de... and ended with building resolv+2.1.1 and bind-8.4.1 for no good reason. Whoever had problems with resolving host names on his Sun3 recently can get help here.

May 2. 2003 - www.sun3zoo.de back online

First our firewall crashed, then a trusty (crusty) old 300MB SCSI hard drive failed, but now ew're back on line!

April 21. 2003 - NetBSD-1.6.1 released

New toy for Sun3 users: NetBSD-1.6.1

And here the link to the german mirror.

March 21. 2003 - 10th anniversary

Happy Birthday NetBSD!

March 7. 2003 - pictures of a Helios memory expansion card

Martin Emrich has sent me pictures of his Sun 3/50 which is equipped with a memory expansion card from Helios.

December 16. 2002 - Sun has the Sun3 Field Engineers Handbook online

Sun publishes the Field Engineers Handbook for Sun3 online!

August 2. 2002 - www.sun3zoo.de up - Sun 3/470 defective

Yesterday i tried to revive the Sun 3/470, but to no avail. The spare CPU runs for some hours and crashes then too. My next idea to use one of my four 3/260 CPUs became a desaster... all four are dead too!!!

I'm quite in despair now!!!

As a temporary fix i threw out all boards from the 3/470 chassis and plugged the hard drives which reside in the two upper drive bays to a Sun 3/60. The external ethernet cable was thrown at the 3/60 too. Thus, my Zoo is without a server and without Internet eventually.

July 30. 2002 - www.sun3zoo.de down

Today my 3/470 which serves the pages of www.sun3zoo.de was not online. First i thought it might be a hard disk failure, but eventually the CPU is defective! Since i couldn't find the problem yet, i've temporarily fixed the machine.

Attention: Until i can finally repair the machine (or plan B comes in action) the pages of www.sun3zoo.de will not always be reachable in the next few days.

July 27. 2002 - Air show disaster in the Ukraine

During a flight show in the Ukraine at least 66 people died. All people in the region Kaiserslautern remember the desastrous incident at Ramstein air base in August 1988 where 70 were killed and several hundred injured.

Condolences to all people belonging to the victims.

July 20. 2002 - New machine

Sebastian Marius Kirsch gave me his Sun 3/50. This machine comes with a memory expansion board from Solflower and a Shoebox.

June 6. 2002 - Pictures of the 3rd Sun3 Zoo Party

The time has come to present the long awaited pictures.

June 5. 2002 - Software packages for Sun3

I've packed together all software i compiled for my Sun3's recently:

Hint: cap, ssh, perl and apache have to be installed to /opt. Whoever likes 'em more in /usr/local should consider this softlink:

        ln -s /usr/local /opt

There is another link necessary to use perl anyway:

        ln -s /opt/perl/bin/perl /usr/bin/perl

April 3. 2002 - Sun 3/80 NVRAM repair

I have updated my page about the Sun3/80 NVRAM. As a quick summary, i have shamelessly stolen everything from Heiko Krupps Fixing a 3/80 NVRAM IDPROM page. Hint: The cgi-bin at the end of this page uses a random number generator to guess the IDPROM contents. If you still have the correct ethernet address and/or serial number, please use these.

March 28. 2002 - Sun3 Zoo Party

Ok, this party is over and in this moment i'm just browsing the callendar for a new party date next year...

The second most important event was the reanimation of a Sun 3/260. But even more important, all guests got enough to eat (i think)...

This time even more photos were shoot and i'll put 'em on the web-pages ASAP.

March 20. 2002 - Invitation

It is time for a new Sun3 Zoo Party next week! Anyone interested in Sun3s is invited. March 28. 6 p.m. at the usual location ;-)

March 13. 2002 - New Informations about the Ciprico Rimfire 3200

Recently someone contacted me and told me he had a Rimfire that he wanted to use in a Sun3. Therefore i stuffed all Usenet articles, software and drivers that i had collected over the years together and put them onto my Rimfire page and here for download.

September 16. 2001 - Terror against Amerika

It is a miracle: All 340 employees of Sun Microsystems Inc. who worked in the south tower of the World Trade Center could escape safely.

Ribbon But Phil Rosenzweig, an employee of Sun Microsystems Inc. was killed on American Airlines flight 11 when terrorists crashed the machine into the WTC.

September 12. 2001 - Terror against Amerika

First i simply couldn't believe it... then i saw the horrible pictures on the TV. It made me very sad and i wondered how this could happen. Condolences to all victims and belonging people.

August 27. 2001 - Sun 3/280 case

Saturday i made a journey to Tilo Hacke at Anzing near Munich and traded in a 3/280 case for a 3/160 case. It may last some days until i can shoot some pictures though.

August 8. 2001 - Pictures of the Sun3-Zoo-Party

As i promised, here are the pictures of the 2. Sun3-Zoo-Party

July 29. 2001 - Wau Holland is dead

The co-founder and honour-president of the Chaos Computer Club in Germany died this morning.

July 27. 2001 - Sun3Zoo now online again

It lasted nearly three months until my Sun3Zoo is working again. Unfortunately i hardly find any time to care about the museum because my wife has born a baby that occupies all my spare time! It was a chain of problems that made the downtime so long. First our company went behind a firewall and of course the museum machines are the last ones to think of. And when we had time to fix them, the firewall of the museum broke. Finally when we had overcome this mischief, we had a power outage and one of the SMD hard drives of my web server failed. Last, but not least: If my baby cries, the museum has to wait...

March 27. 2001 - New address for Sun3/3x-Archive

The Sun3/3x-Archive does have a new Internet address:
http://www.sun3arc.org

March 21. 2001 - New pictures

Here comes the second batch of pictures from my new toy: a Casio QV-10A digital camera. Not only did i shot new pictures from most machines of my Zoo, additionally i made pictures of my new hub, a Cabletron box and my printers: an Epson LX-800 and a HP DeskJet 1200C.

March 19. 2001 - AUI or BNC?

Ever stood near a Sun 3/50 or 3/60 and wondered, how to activate the other ethernet port?

March 09. 2001 - Sun3-Zoo-Party #2

Down in the cellar of building 57 they met: A couple of Sun3 freaks came together to screw, to hack and to chat... just to have fun!

As soon as the photographs are finished, i'll post 'em here.

February 1. 2000 - Fixed version of the y2k-patch

It drove us over the century border, but some uncertainties remained in the old y2k-patch. Here is the new one. Nicer, bigger, more colorful! Check the README for detail.