Sun Ultra 5
| Make | Sun |
| Model | Ultra 5 |
| Release Year | 1998 |
| CPU | 333MHz UltraSPARC IIi |
| Memory | 256MB |
| GPU | ATI 3D RAGE Pro (onboard VGA) |
| Storage | 40GB ATA HDD and 20GB ATA HDD |
| OS | OpenBSD 7.6 and Solaris 9 |
Obtaining this computer helped me achieve my childhood dream of owning a Sun SPARC machine. It has been so fun to play with and I've really enjoyed using it. I didn't originally have a keyboard with this machine, so I would use a remote X server to interact with it graphically and a null modem cable to interact with it over serial. However, I now have the usb3sun, which is an adapter that allows me to use USB keyboards and mice with Sun workstations, and that works beautifully. I have Solaris 10 on my ThinkPad X40 set up to serve as a JumpStart server, which allows me to avoid needing to burn more CDs than necessary.
I have the second of three revisions of Ultra 5, which comes with the 3D RAGE Pro graphics. I have two ATA hard drives that I use with it - a 20GB drive that appears to be an official Sun part and has Solaris 9 installed on it and a 40GB drive that has OpenBSD 7.4 installed on it. I was able to mount the 20GB drive above the floppy drive, which has given me the ability to have both drives in the system at once. I can use OpenBoot to switch between the two drives at boot time. Eventually I would like to get a SATA or SCSI card for it. Then I could run OpenBSD from the card and Solaris on the internal ATA bus.
I have had so much fun since first receiving this machine. I have obtained an optical mouse for it, but I still need to acquire a keyboard for it to allow me to fully utilize it. However, I am simply happy to own such a machine. It has been my first real foray into commercial UNIX outside of Mac OS X and I'm really happy to finally own one of my childhood dream computers.