Sun-1

Last updated
Sun Microsystems Sun-1
Sun-1 Badge.jpg
Computer Museum Sun-1.jpg
Sun-1 in Computer Museum
Developer Sun Microsystems
Type Workstation
Release date1982;42 years ago (1982)
Introductory priceUS$8,900 (equivalent to $23,000in 2022 [1] )
CPU Motorola 68000
Successor Sun-2

Sun-1 was the first generation of UNIX computer workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in May 1982. These were based on a CPU board designed by Andy Bechtolsheim while he was a graduate student at Stanford University and funded by DARPA. The Sun-1 systems ran SunOS 0.9, a port of UniSoft's UniPlus V7 port of Seventh Edition UNIX to the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, with no window system. Affixed to the case of early Sun-1 workstations and servers is a red bas relief emblem with the word SUN spelled using only symbols shaped like the letter U. This is the original Sun logo, rather than the more familiar purple diamond shape used later.

Contents

The first Sun-1 workstation was sold to Solo Systems in May 1982. [2] The Sun-1/100 was used in the original Lucasfilm EditDroid non-linear editing system.

Models

Sun 1/100 desktop workstation Sun-100-front.jpg
Sun 1/100 desktop workstation
Sun 150U rackmount server Sun150U Front.jpg
Sun 150U rackmount server
ModelChassis
Sun 1007-slot Multibus (desktop)
Sun 15015-slot Multibus (rackmount)

Hardware

Sun 100U Cardcage Sun100U Cardcage.jpg
Sun 100U Cardcage

The Sun-1 workstation was based on the Stanford University SUN workstation designed by Andy Bechtolsheim (advised by Vaughan Pratt and Forest Baskett), a graduate student and co-founder of Sun Microsystems. At the heart of this design were the Multibus CPU, memory, and video display cards. The cards used in the Sun-1 workstation were a second-generation design with a private memory bus allowing memory to be expanded to 2 MB without performance degradation.

The Sun 68000 board introduced in 1982 was a powerful single-board computer. It combined a 10 MHz Motorola 68000 microprocessor, a Sun-designed memory management unit (MMU), 256 KB of zero wait state memory with parity, up to 32 KB of EPROM memory, two serial ports, a 16-bit parallel port and an Intel Multibus (IEEE 796 bus) interface in a single 12-inch-wide (300 mm), 6.75-inch-deep (171 mm) Multibus form factor.

By using the Motorola 68000 processor tightly coupled with the Sun-1 MMU, the Sun 68000 CPU board was able to support a multi-tasking operating system such as UNIX. It included an advanced Sun-designed multi-process two-level MMU with facilities for memory protection, code sharing and demand paging of memory. The Sun-1 MMU was necessary because the Motorola 68451 MMU did not always work correctly with the 68000 and could not always restore the processor state after a page fault.

The CPU board included 256 KB of memory which could be replaced or augmented with two additional memory cards for a total of 2 MB. Although the memory cards used the Multibus form factor, they only used the Multibus interface for power; all memory access was via the smaller private P2 bus. This was a synchronous private memory bus that allowed for simultaneous memory input/output transfers. It also allowed for full performance zero wait state operation of the memory. When installing the first 1 MB expansion board, either the 256 Kb of memory on the CPU board or the first 256 KB on the expansion board had to be disabled. [3]

On-board I/O included a dual serial port UART and a 16-bit parallel port. The serial ports were implemented with an Intel 8274 UART and later with a NEC D7201C UART. Serial port A was wired as a data communications equipment (DCE) port and had full modem control. It was also the console port if no graphical display was installed in the system. Serial port B was wired as a data terminal equipment (DTE) port and had no modem control. Both serial ports could also be used as terminal ports allowing three people to use one workstation, although two did not have graphical displays. The 16-bit parallel port was a special-purpose port for connecting 8-bit parallel port keyboard and 8-bit parallel port optical mouse for workstations with graphical displays. The parallel port was never used as a general purpose parallel printer port.

The CPU board included a fully compatible Multibus (IEEE 796 bus). It was an asynchronous bus that accommodated devices with various transfer rates while maintaining maximum throughput. It had 20 address lines so it could address up to 1 MB of Multibus memory and 1 MB of I/O locations although most I/O devices only decoded the first 64 KB of address space. The Sun CPU board fully supported multi-master functionality that allowed it to share the Multibus with other DMA devices. [4]

The keyboard was a Micro Switch 103SD30-2, or a KeyTronic P2441 for the German market. The memory-mapped, bit-mapped frame buffer (graphics) board had a resolution of 1024 × 1024 pixels, but only 1024 × 800 was displayed on the monitor. The graphics board included hardware to accelerate raster operations. A Ball model HD17H 17-inch video display monitor was used. An Ethernet board was available, originally implementing the 3 Mbit/s Xerox PARC Ethernet specification, which was later upgraded to the 3Com 10 Mbit/s version. An Interphase SMD 2180 disk controller could be installed to connect up to four Fujitsu 84 MB M2313K or CDC 16.7 MB (8.35 MB fixed, 8.35 MB removable) 9455 Lark drives. All of the boards were installed in a 6- or 7-slot Multibus card cage.

Later documentation shows that a 13- or 19-inch color display was available. The color frame buffer had a resolution of 640 × 512 pixels, with 640 × 480 displayed on the monitor. The board could display 256 colors from a palette of 16 million. ½-inch 9-track reel-to-reel tape drives and QIC-02 ¼-inch cartridge tape drives were also added to the offering.

There was also a second generation Sun-1 CPU board referred to as the Sun-1.5 CPU board. [5] [6] [7] [8]

Sun-1 systems upgraded with Sun-2 Multibus CPU boards were identified with a U suffix to their model number.

Sun timeline

Sun BladeSun FireSun FireSun EnterpriseSun Ultra EnterpriseSPARCserverSun Ultra seriesSun Ultra seriesSun Ultra seriesSun Ultra seriesSun Blade (workstation)Sun 386iSun Java WorkstationSun Ultra seriesSPARCstationSun-3Sun-2Sun-1Sun-1

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Motorola 68020</span> 32-bit microprocessor

The Motorola 68020 is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. A lower-cost version was also made available, known as the 68EC020. In keeping with naming practices common to Motorola designs, the 68020 is usually referred to as the "020", pronounced "oh-two-oh" or "oh-twenty".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Motorola 68030</span> 32-bit microprocessor

The Motorola 68030 ("sixty-eight-oh-thirty") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PDP-11</span> Series of 16-bit minicomputers

The PDP–11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the late 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold, making it one of DEC's most successful product lines. The PDP-11 is considered by some experts to be the most popular minicomputer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Motorola 68010</span>

The Motorola MC68010 processor is a 16/32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1982 as the successor to the Motorola 68000. It fixes several small flaws in the 68000, and adds a few features.

The 88000 is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Motorola during the 1980s. The MC88100 arrived on the market in 1988, some two years after the competing SPARC and MIPS. Due to the late start and extensive delays releasing the second-generation MC88110, the m88k achieved very limited success outside of the MVME platform and embedded controller environments. When Motorola joined the AIM alliance in 1991 to develop the PowerPC, further development of the 88000 ended.

The Motorola 68000 series is a family of 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and were the primary competitors of Intel's x86 microprocessors. They were best known as the processors used in the early Apple Macintosh, the Sharp X68000, the Commodore Amiga, the Sinclair QL, the Atari ST and Falcon, the Atari Jaguar, the Sega Genesis, the Philips CD-i, the Capcom System I (Arcade), the AT&T UNIX PC, the Tandy Model 16/16B/6000, the Sun Microsystems Sun-1, Sun-2 and Sun-3, the NeXT Computer, NeXTcube, NeXTstation, and NeXTcube Turbo, early Silicon Graphics IRIS workstations, computers from MASSCOMP, the Texas Instruments TI-89/TI-92 calculators, the Palm Pilot, the Control Data Corporation CDCNET Device Interface, and the Space Shuttle. Although no modern desktop computers are based on processors in the 680x0 series, derivative processors are still widely used in embedded systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Workstation</span> High-end single-user computer

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 workstation has been used loosely to refer to everything from a mainframe computer terminal to a PC connected to a network, but the most common form refers to the class of hardware offered by several current and defunct companies such as Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Apollo Computer, DEC, HP, NeXT, and IBM which powered the 3D computer graphics revolution of the late 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Memory management unit</span> Hardware translating virtual addresses to physical address

A memory management unit (MMU), sometimes called paged memory management unit (PMMU), is a computer hardware unit that examines all memory references on the memory bus, translating these requests, known as virtual memory addresses, into physical addresses in main memory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SBus</span>

SBus is a computer bus system that was used in most SPARC-based computers 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 SPARC processors, replacing the earlier VMEbus used in their Motorola 68020- and 68030-based systems and early SPARC boxes. When Sun moved to open the SPARC definition in the early 1990s, SBus was likewise standardized and became IEEE-1496. In 1997 Sun started to migrate away from SBus to the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus, and today SBus is no longer used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zilog Z8000</span> 16-bit microprocessor

The Z8000 is a 16-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog in early 1979. The architecture was designed by Bernard Peuto while the logic and physical implementation was done by Masatoshi Shima, assisted by a small group of people. In contrast to most designs of the era, the Z8000 did not use microcode which allowed it to be implemented in only 17,500 transistors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DECstation</span> DEC brand of computers

The DECstation was a brand of computers used by DEC, and refers to three distinct lines of computer systems—the first released in 1978 as a word processing system, and the latter two both released in 1989. These comprised a range of computer workstations based on the MIPS architecture and a range of PC compatibles. The MIPS-based workstations ran ULTRIX, a DEC-proprietary version of UNIX, and early releases of OSF/1.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HP 9000</span> Line of workstation and server computer systems

HP 9000 is a line of workstation and server computer systems produced by the Hewlett-Packard (HP) Company. The native operating system for almost all HP 9000 systems is HP-UX, which is based on UNIX System V.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PERQ</span> First commercially produced personal workstation with a Graphical User Interface

The PERQ, also referred to as the Three Rivers PERQ or ICL PERQ, is a pioneering workstation computer produced in the late 1970s through the early 1980s. It is the first commercially-produced personal workstation with a graphical user interface (GUI). The design of the PERQ was heavily influenced by the original workstation computer, the Xerox Alto, which was never commercially produced. The workstation was conceived by six former Carnegie Mellon University alumni and employees: Brian S. Rosen, James R. Teter, William H. Broadley, J. Stanley Kriz, Raj Reddy and Paul G. Newbury, who formed the startup Three Rivers Computer Corporation (3RCC) in 1974.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atari TT030</span> Personal computer by Atari

The Atari TT030 is a member of the Atari ST family, released in 1990. It was originally intended to be a high-end Unix workstation, but Atari took two years to release a port of Unix SVR4 for the TT, which prevented the TT from ever being seriously considered in its intended market.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multibus</span> Computer bus standard

Multibus is a computer bus standard used in industrial systems. It was developed by Intel Corporation and was adopted as the IEEE 796 bus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sun-3</span> Series of computer workstations and servers

Sun-3 is a series of UNIX computer workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched on September 9, 1985. The Sun-3 series are VMEbus-based systems similar to some of the earlier Sun-2 series, but using the Motorola 68020 microprocessor, in combination with the Motorola 68881 floating-point co-processor and a proprietary Sun MMU. Sun-3 systems were supported in SunOS versions 3.0 to 4.1.1_U1 and also have current support in NetBSD and Linux.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sun-2</span> Computer

The Sun-2 series of UNIX workstations and servers was launched by Sun Microsystems in November 1983. As the name suggests, the Sun-2 represented the second generation of Sun systems, superseding the original Sun-1 series. The Sun-2 series used a 10 MHz Motorola 68010 microprocessor with a proprietary Sun-2 Memory Management Unit (MMU), which enabled it to be the first Sun architecture to run a full virtual memory UNIX implementation, SunOS 1.0, based on 4.1BSD. Early Sun-2 models were based on the Intel Multibus architecture, with later models using VMEbus, which continued to be used in the successor Sun-3 and Sun-4 families.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ultra 80</span> Computer workstation

The Sun Microsystems Ultra 80 is a computer workstation that shipped from November 1999 to 2002.

Torch Computers Ltd was a computer hardware company with origins in a 1982 joint venture between Acorn Computers and Climar Group that led to the development of the Communicator or C-series computer, a system based on the BBC Micro with a Z80 second processor and integral modem, intended as a viewdata terminal.

The SUN workstation was a modular computer system designed at Stanford University in the early 1980s. It became the seed technology for many commercial products, including the original workstations from Sun Microsystems.

References

  1. Johnston, Louis; Williamson, Samuel H. (2023). "What Was the U.S. GDP Then?". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved November 30, 2023. United States Gross Domestic Product deflator figures follow the Measuring Worth series.
  2. Bhide, Amar (14 December 1989). "Vinod Khosla and Sun Microsystems". Harvard Business School. Archived from the original on 9 July 2012.
  3. Sun 1M Memory Board User's Manual. Sun Microsystems. February 1983. Revision A.
  4. Sun 68000 Board User's Manual (PDF). Sun Microsystems. February 1983. Revision B.
  5. Sun 120/170 Installation Manual. Sun Microsystems. March 12, 1984. Revision C.
  6. Mark Callow (August 8, 1984). "Subject: Re: Performance of VAX/780/750, Pyramid & Sun". Newsgroup:  net.works . Retrieved July 13, 2023. You might have a Sun-1.5 running 4.1c (which Sun have referred to as the Berkeley Beta Release of 4.2).
  7. Tim Mann (August 14, 1984). "Subject: Re: Performance of VAX/780/750, Pyramid & Sun". Newsgroup:  net.works . Retrieved July 13, 2023. there were some "Sun-1.5" processors shipped which ran 4.1c Unix.
  8. Mason, Amberelle (June 20, 2023). "Explore 4.1c.1 BSD Source Code using Git". GitHub. Retrieved July 18, 2023. Sun hardware support was temporarily added to 4.1BSD and later removed before 4.2BSD was released.

Bibliography