Reviving an Old Sun Microsystems V120 Server 

You need to get yourself an Ultra 80. They were the last bulletproof workstations that they made, with up to 4 CPUs and options for hardware 3D graphics.

yeah I'm starting to think there are a lot of Suns still running out there. would love an Ultra 80, super awesome machines.

@@hessex1899 Sunblade 1000 and 2000 were also good. I was using a Sunblade 2000 with xvr-1200 with 2 x 24" lcd's connected via dvi as late as 2013. I also worked at a powerstation that used sun boxes as scada systems. Those machines had a 10 year life.

@@clabretro When will you get your first Alpha and Itanium machines? ;)

@@hessex1899 Desktop version of the E420R server. I ran an E220R for many, many years.

It actually says that in the V120 manual, which I of course read after trying the MRV cable. I need to get some of those Cisco console cables... but in the meantime I'm gonna hook it up to that MRV which is also RJ45, so I'll just make an RJ45RJ45 crossover cable between the Sun Fire and the MRV.

Nice! Yeah it's amazing how much things have changed.

Do not use raspberry pi's they aren't reliable i bought best model and have a low voltage notification and then my hard drive with 20 years of data corrupted

@@vanpeters9751 Thats so tragic :(

oh yeah, I like the v120 but it's definitely slow

@@clabretro needs properly compiled code to be usable, as in: you better know which options to use with the Sun Studio compilers to get the performance.

That's awesome! It's amazing how many server variants Sun came out with over the years. I'm totally new to Solaris so I'm excited to mess around with it.

I still use Zones! hell I just deployed a DNS server in a Zone running on OmniOS :))

@@AntranigVartanian yeah, zones are still way ahead of anything GNU / Linux has, even in 2024, and are still a thing to use. Fancy meeting you here!

Nice! those v240s look awesome, just need to find one for the right price. yeah got an x2200 which will start showing up in some videos. never messed around with solaris before so it'll be fun to get them working.

@@clabretro It would be interesting if you can find a Sunblade 2000 as those machines take fc-al drives instead of scsi. I still have a Blade 2000 and Ultra 80 in my collection but sadly they are on the other side of the world to me right now. Locally I just have a V210 and V120. Get involved and start testing Debian! It's still being worked on for Sparc!

nice! I'll need to look into that diskless client approach.

Oh man, you got to play with the e10k? I heard that the cost to replace the midplane in that thing was the better part of a million dollars!

Awesome! I would've loved having one of those back in 2005-2007. When I did research on this V120 it sounds like the Netras were a sister line meant more for telecommunications use, they were tougher machines rated to handle more physical abuse.

@@clabretro some netra's had AC power supplies allowing them to be installed in telcom system racks. Exactly the same chassis just different power supplies.

Those V880s are no joke! That'd be cool if you got it back to life.

totally correct! it was pretty scratched up so I ended up replacing it with thermal compound and haven't had issues.

ha that's amazing! makes me wonder how many of these old things are still in service. what kind of software was it running?

@@clabretro I believe it was used for Avaya CMS (telephony system)

Fascinating, looks like that's still sold. I bet there are plenty of old instances running out there still. Thanks for the info!

Amazingly, it'll run Solaris 10: www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/hcl/data/sol/systems/views/all_servers_oracle_systems.page2.html No "official" support for 11 though: www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/hcl/data/s11ga/systems/views/oracle_systems_all_results.page1.html If the hard drive works I'll have to give those both a try anyway though. I'm new to the Solaris world, I need to play around with OpenBSD as well.

@@clabretro thats super cool!

Oh interesting! The Wikipedia page on the SPARC II is super misleading: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraSPARC_II. Glad to know it's got a good processor in it.

@@clabretro Wikipedia is not exactly wrong it's sun's marketing that's weird. The cpu you have is a IIe+ but for some reason sun liked to call it a IIi even tho they already had a cpu named IIi from the previous generation.

Ah thank you! I was trying to figure that out.

@@clabretro Yeah, sorry, my mistake about the IIe+. I never had or worked with those particular models. My first SPARC server was a SPARCstation 4 that I got off a local Linux Users Group. I got it working, and practiced with Solaris 8. Then I got an Ultra 5, maxed out the CPU and memory, and beta tested Solaris 9 and 10 on it. I also had a Sun Fire V240, a 280R in the form of a Netra branded model, and haven't been able to afford one since. They are priced out of my budget now, but I still love the systems to DEATH. I really like the Solaris operating system, and am an active member of the Illumos community. I'd like to get a CoolThreads server (the Niagara UltraSPARC T1, T2 or T2 Plus) and run Solaris on it again!

@maverickbna very cool! love hearing all these stories about people's experiences with these Sun machines.

I was able to reach it over the "A LOM" RJ45 port via serial with minicom on Linux, I suspect default Putty settings on Windows would work too. The trick is having the right cable, I made my own based on the pinout in the V120 manual, starting at page 83: docs.oracle.com/cd/E19088-01/v120.srvr/816-2090-10/816-2090-10.pdf. I believe a Cisco DB9/RJ45 console cable will work for this, but I haven't tried it myself!

@@clabretro Thank you very much for advice !!!! I spent many days research . but I didn't find anything useful!!!!!

hey there! well - beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder when it comes to these old enterprise server prices. for context I paid $120 shipped for my v240 (but I think I got lucky - that was a good deal - and one of the CPUs was bad and missing a heatsink). So after CPU and heatsink costs it's back up to the ~$180 range. I paid something like $130 for that v120. Personally, I'd go with the v210, I think you'll get more use out of it. the v120 and v100s are pretty underpowered, whereas my v240 can comfortably run Solaris 10 and anything I do with it. but either one would be fun, can't really go wrong!

@@clabretroUpdate: it arrived! I’m waiting on hard drives and drive trays though. LOM and OBP work, but I have noticed some odd behavior with the diagnostics. When I first tested it, I got some errors from VxDiag about the I2C bus, but it magically fixed itself. Unfortunately both CPU fans are bad so I’ll have to find some replacement 25mm fans. Thank you for making all of this amazing content on Sun stuff. Your videos on the Sun Ray got me hooked, and I guess it got the best of me lol.

@@razzledev Mate you gotta document your build id love to watch

Oh thanks, I never actually went and looked that up.

I left it on there! Not sure if it's indium but definitely some sort of thermal pad.

Sure, I've added my email to the About section of the channel: www.youtube.com/@clabretro/about

i think it needs skibiddy toilet scard for inside scitting

Well, the name for sure. Oracle still produces servers that you can probably trace back to the Sun acquisition.

ha never heard that. how come?

@@clabretro so you read the manual before racking it up! :-).

Was just looking this up recently, it's actually short for the "Stanford University Network," three of the founders met at Stanford.