The SPARCstation 2, or SS2 (code named ''Calvin'', Sun 4/75) is a

SPARC SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system developed ...

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''worksta ...

computer sold by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, ...

. It is based on the sun4c architecture, and is implemented in a

pizza box form factor In computing, a pizza box is a style of case design for desktop computers or network switches. Pizza box cases tend to be wide and flat, normally in height, resembling pizza delivery boxes and thus the name. This is in contrast to a tower sy ...

Specifications

CPU

40 MHz

Cypress Cypress is a common name for various coniferous trees or shrubs of northern temperate regions that belong to the family Cupressaceae. The word ''cypress'' is derived from Old French ''cipres'', which was imported from Latin ''cypressus'', the la ...

CY7C601 CPU (28.5 MIPS), TI TMS390C601A FPU (4.2 MFLOPS). The only known CPU upgrade option was the

Weitek Weitek Corporation was an American chip-design company that originally focused on floating-point units for a number of commercial CPU designs. During the early to mid-1980s, Weitek designs could be found powering a number of high-end designs a ...

80 MHz "SPARC POWER μP" (power-up).

Memory

The SPARCstation 2 can be configured with up to 128 MB of memory in total: 64 MB on the motherboard, and an additional 64 MB using a special 32 MB SBus memory card with another 32 MB piggy-backed daughterboard. The 16 RAM slots on the motherboard can be populated with either 1 MB

SIMM A SIMM (single in-line memory module) is a type of memory module containing random-access memory used in computers from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. It differs from a dual in-line memory module (DIMM), the most predominant form of memo ...

s for a total of 16 MB, or with 4 MB

s for a total of 64 MB. Standard 30-pin

s can be used as long as they use parity error detection and are rated 80 ns or faster.

Disk drives

The SPARCstation 2 uses a standard 50-pin

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...

interface and can house two 3 1/2" full-height

disk drive Disk storage (also sometimes called drive storage) is a general category of storage mechanisms where data is recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical changes to a surface layer of one or more rotating disks. A disk drive is ...

s. The SS2 also comes with a special auto-ejecting 1.44 MB

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined ...

drive. Modern 80-pin

Single Connector Attachment A SCSI connector ( ) is used to connect computer parts that use a system called SCSI to communicate with each other. Generally, two connectors, designated male and female, plug together to form a connection which allows two components, such as a c ...

(SCA) SCSI drives can be used internally with an adapter, but the plastic drive sled used with 50-pin drives must be cut to allow clearance for the adapter board. SCA drives may run hotter than original SCSI drives and cause heating issues, especially if two drives are installed.

Network

There is an

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...

AUI port on board, which can be supplemented by add-on

SBus SBus is a computer bus system that was used in most SPARC-based computers (including all SPARCstations) from Sun Microsystems and others during the 1990s. It was introduced by Sun in 1989 to be a high-speed bus counterpart to their high-speed ...

cards. Onboard Ethernet is provided by an

AMD Lance Am7990 AMD Lance Am7990 IEEE 802.3 AMD.com – TechDocs Ethernet Media Access Controller (MAC) controller were introduced in 1985. AMD.com – TechDocs Its architecture is the basis for AMD's PCnet Family of highly integrated single-chip Ethernet controll ...

Ethernet controller. External AUI transceivers are required for connection to

10BASE5 10BASE5 (also known as thick Ethernet or thicknet) was the first commercially available variant of Ethernet. The technology was standardized in 1982 as IEEE 802.3. 10BASE5 uses a thick and stiff coaxial cable up to in length. Up to 100 stati ...

10BASE2 10BASE2 (also known as cheapernet, thin Ethernet, thinnet, and thinwire) is a variant of Ethernet that uses thin coaxial cable terminated with BNC connectors to build a local area network. During the mid to late 1980s this was the dominan ...

10BASE-T 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. ...

, or other Ethernet

physical layer In the seven-layer OSI model of computer networking, the physical layer or layer 1 is the first and lowest layer; The layer most closely associated with the physical connection between devices. This layer may be implemented by a PHY chip. Th ...

media. The OpenBoot ROM is able to boot from network, using RARP and TFTP.

NVRAM

The SPARCstation 2 uses an M48T02 battery-backed RTC with RAM chip which handles the real time clock and boot parameter storage. The only problem with this chip is that the battery is internal, which means the entire chip must be replaced when its battery runs out. As all sun4c machines are now older than the battery life of this chip, a substantial number of these systems now refuse to boot. Additionally, the sun4c design used the reserved bits in the M48T02's NVRAM in a non-standard way; since later revisions of the M48T02 chip exert stricter control over these bits, a current M48T02 will store the NVRAM data, but the RTC will not function correctly and the system may fail to auto-boot. Due to incompatibilities with modern M48T02s, it is common to modify failed NVRAMs by cutting into the encapsulation and patching in a new battery. It is also possible to replace the entire encapsulation, which also contains a 32.768 kHz clock crystal.

Operating systems

The following operating systems will run on a SPARCstation 2: *

SunOS SunOS is a Unix-branded 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, which were based on BSD, while versions 5.0 ...

4.1.1 onwards * Solaris 2.0 to Solaris 7 (sun4c dropped in Solaris 8) *

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

- Some, but not all, distributions supported this sparc32 sub-architecture; it had support in

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

from Debian 2.1 (March 1999) through Debian 4.0 (etch), last updated in May 2010. *

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is a ...

/sparc32 since 1.0 *

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking N ...

/sparc32 - All versions up to 5.9 (OpenBSD 5.9 was the last release to support SPARC32)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sparcstation 002 Sun workstations SPARC microprocessor products