55 points by rbanffy 4 days ago | 22 comments
don-code 4 days ago
By this point, Sun hardware was mostly PC-like: it took SATA hard drives, DDR memory, and USB peripherals. You didn't need to issue STOP to get to the `ok` prompt, you just had to do some specifically-timed dance with the (soft) power button.
My guess, based on the company throwing it out, is that they hit the power button, got a blinking red light with no video output, assumed it was dead, and tossed it. At this point, I didn't even know yet that there was an `ok` prompt to get to, and I spent a few hours at the office that night, wrapping my head around the service manual before getting it to dump me to `ok` and let me poke around.
I dreamt for years of restoring it and using it as a NAS (ZFS!), but life got in the way, and I eventually sold it (sufficiently refurbed to be running Solaris 10, but missing things like the side panels and drive cage) for only $250 or so.
noisy_boy 4 days ago
omoikane 4 days ago
I believe the first three bytes should be 08:00:20, since "08:00:20" is currently assigned to Oracle (who bought Sun in 2010), and "80:00:20" appears to be unassigned.
This is also visible in the photo just below "Sun SPARCstation 20", where it says:
Ethernet address 8:0:20:c0:ff:ee, Host ID: 72c0ffee.
userbinator 4 days ago