SPARCclassic

The SPARCclassic (Sun 4/15) is a workstation introduced by Sun Microsystems. It is based on the sun4m architecture, and is enclosed in a lunchbox chassis. It was unveiled on November 10, 1992, along with the SPARCstation LX; both were marketed at the low end of the Unix workstation market. The SPARCclassic had an original retail price of US$4,495 (equivalent to $10,072 in 2024).^[2][3]

SPARCclassic

Codename	Sunergy[a]
Also known as	4/15
Developer	Sun Microsystems
Manufacturer	Sun Microsystems
Product family	SPARCstation
Type	Workstation
Release date	November 10, 1991 (1991-11-10)
Availability	December 1992[2]
Introductory price	US$4,495
Operating system	SunOS Solaris
CPU	microSPARC at 50 MHz
Memory	16–96 MB
Successor	SPARCstation 4
Related	SPARCstation LX

Specifications

Rear view of the SPARCclassic

CPU support

The SPARCclassic incorporates a single 50 MHz microSPARC processor.

Memory

The SPARCclassic has three banks with two DSIMM slots each. The official maximum configuration uses 16 MB modules, but the first bank can also hold 32 MB modules giving a maximum of 96 MB memory.

Disk drives

The SPARCclassic can hold one internal 3.5-inch 50-pin, single ended, fast-narrow SCSI drive and a floppy. It also supports external SCSI devices. There is no IDE/ATAPI support.

Network support

The SPARCclassic comes with an on-board AMD Lance Ethernet chipset providing 10BASE-T networking as standard and 10BASE2 and 10BASE5 via an AUI transceiver. The OpenBoot ROM is able to boot from network, using RARP and TFTP. Like all other SPARCstation systems, the SPARCclassic holds system information such as MAC address and serial number in NVRAM. If the battery on this chip dies, then the system will not be able to boot.

Dimensions

Its dimensions are 9.6 in (24 cm) × 10.4 in (26 cm) × 4.6 in (12 cm) (W × D × H). The weight is 11 lb (5.0 kg).^[4]

Operating systems

The following operating systems run on a SPARCclassic:

• SunOS 4.1.3c onwards
• Solaris 2.3 Edition II to Solaris 9
• Linux - Some but not all distributions still support this sparc32 sub-architecture
• NetBSD/sparc32
• OpenBSD/sparc32

Differences between Classic and LX

The SPARCclassic was designed to be an entry-level workstation with a lower price point than the SPARCstation LX; it has a lower-end CG3 framebuffer rather than the LX's accelerated CG6. The SPARCclassic also features 8-bit audio as opposed to 16-bit audio for the LX. The motherboards of the two systems are otherwise similar, and both use the same chassis.

SPARCclassic X

SPARCclassic X, an X terminal based on the SPARCclassic workstation

In July 1993, Sun introduced the SPARCclassic X, a stripped-down SPARCclassic marketed as an X terminal. It shipped with no local storage, and either 4 or 8 MB of memory.^[5]

Rather than running Solaris, the SPARCclassic X loaded and ran special software over the network.

Sun offered an upgrade kit to a full workstation that included a hard drive and additional memory.

Notes

1. The SPARCstation LX shares the code-name Sunergy with the low-end range of SPARCclassic, SPARCclassic X, and SPARCstation ZX.^[1]