[geeks] [rescue] wow! what a rescue

[Walter Belgers]

On 20 mrt 2010, at 20:52, Steve Hatle wrote:
>>>> http://belge.rs/side.jpg
>>>> http://belge.rs/back.jpg
>
> My guess is some kind of Tempest hardened workstation. That looks kind of
> like an sbus slot above the SCSI port on the back. Or it might be some kind
> of prototype, since it has an actual Sun property sticker...

The points go to Steve!

It _is_ indeed a TEMPEST workstation.

I am the president of the Dutch UNIX Users Group (NLUUG). November 2007, we
celebrated our 25th anniversary with a big conference in Amsterdam. One of the
speakers was Whitfield Diffie. After talking to him about my hobby of
collecting Sun machines, he very kindly donates his TEMPEST SparcStation 2
that was at his desk at the time. Since then, I have been trying to get the
thing to the Netherlands. Today, this long journey came to an end. An employee
from Sun Netherlands had secured the workstation in the summer of 2008
somewhere in Silicone Valley. Meanwhile, Whitfield had donated the TEMPEST
monitor to a local museum. Last week, the same employee went to Sun USA again
and took with him the workstation on his plane back home. For a measly $50
surcharge, he was allowed to board the plane with all that extra weight.
Customs gave him no problems and now it is here in my home.

The system is a TEMPEST SPARCstation 2, or T-SPARCstation 2 as it says on the
label. The front opens up, revealing a warning sticker that when open it is
not tempest proof, a floppy drive, two hard drive bays and a big on/off
switch. Unfortunately, I do not have trays and they do not seem like any Sun
tray I have seen before. On the back are SCSI, AUI, 13W3 and two serial
connectors. The system boots, but the NVRAM is empty. It seems to be a
standard SPARCstation 2, with 64MB of RAM and a cgsix. On the front is a LED
indicating it's one and a hole.. in it was a piece of tin foil.

It looks like the machine cannot be opened up, although on the back is room
for an sbus card. Maybe this can only be installed in the factory.

I took some more pictures under low light conditions, will make better ones
when I have time.

http://belge.rs/ts0.jpg front
http://belge.rs/ts1.jpg back
http://belge.rs/ts2.jpg close-up back
http://belge.rs/ts3.jpg close-up badge
http://belge.rs/ts4.jpg front opened
http://belge.rs/ts5.jpg warning sticker

If anybody has more interesting information about this system, please let us
know. The Sun-internal SunSolve does not even know about this model..

After having failed to get my hands on a 486i (of which two have been running
here in my home town) I am now a happy man with this rare find!

Walter.
--
Walter Belgers -=- Netherlands -=- walter at belgers.com -=- http://belge.rs/