[luau] Sun Microsystems Intel 386dx25

Dustin Cross dusty at sandust.com
Tue Dec 3 23:06:01 PST 2002


Aloha,

Helping Scott go through the Sun hardware that has been donated and we came
across a Sun Microsystem i386/250.  It is pretty cool.  I knew Sun made PCs
for a little while, but I have never actually seen one.  Has anyone here
ever used one?  It sounds like only SunOS 4.0.2 is the only OS that works
with them.  It is not a true PC so Linux doesn't work.  Guess I'll have to
track a copy SunOS 4.0.2 down!

Dusty


Here is some information about them:

http://lios.apana.org.au/~cdewick/sunshack/data/feh/1.5/wcd00094/wcd09478.ht
m
http://www.machine-room.org/computers/7298/technical.html
http://www.sub.net.au/~ran/sun386i/sun386i-FAQ

Sun 386i
--------

OVERVIEW

The Sun 386i models, based on the Intel 80386 processor, were
introduced when 80386-based IBM PC/AT clones were starting to become
widespread. Intel had finally produced a chip sufficiently capable
(32-bit, among other things) to allow porting SunOS, and using an Intel
processor and an ISA bus offered the ability to run MS-DOS applications
without speed-draining emulation. Unfortunately, they were a dismal
failure.

Support for Sun-386i's was introduced in SunOS 4.0 (?). The 386i
SunOS releases came from Sun's East Coast division, so 386i SunOS was
not identical to the standard version with the same number. The last
released version of SunOS to support Sun-386i's was 4.0.2; there are a
few copies of 4.0.3Beta (with OpenLook 2.0) floating around.

MODELS

    386i/150
        Processor(s):   80386 @ 20MHz, 80387, 80386 on-chip MMU,
                        3 MIPS, 0.17 MFLOPS
        CPU:            501-1241/1414
        Chassis type:   tower (20"H * 7"W * 16"D)
        Bus:            4 32-bit slots; ISA (3 16-bit, 1 8-bit)
        Memory:         8M physical
        Notes:          Shared code name "Roadrunner" with the /250. The
                        frame buffer was not on the ISA bus. 720K or
                        1.44M 3.5" floppy. A variant of the 150 had the
                        250's external cache.

    386i/250
        Processor(s):   80386 @ 25MHz, 80387, 80386 on-chip MMU,
                        5 MIPS, 0.2 MFLOPS
        CPU:            501-1324/1413
        Chassis type:   tower
        Bus:            4 32-bit slots; ISA (3 16-bit, 1 8-bit)
        Memory:         16M physical, 32K cache
        Notes:          Shared code name "Roadrunner" with the /150. The
                        frame buffer was not on the ISA bus. 720K or
                        1.44M 3.5" floppy.

    486i
        Processor(s):   80486
        Notes:          Code-named "Apache". A very limited quantity of
                        these were supposedly built and shipped to
                        customers just before the Intel-based line was
                        cancelled.






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