hobbes

Sun SPARCstation IPX (4/50)

I received this machine in non-working condition but it was repairable. The power supply appears to have had a more significant blowout than my IPC and appears to not have been kept in the best environmental condition - possibly kept in a garage or something. The metal parts of the power supply that had capacitor electrolyte contact it have since rusted over. After removing all the electrolytic capacitors on the secondary side, cleaning the board as thoroughly as possible with 99.9% alcohol and reinstalling high quality Nichicon long life capacitors, the machine came back to life. The fan has seen better days and will likely be replaced.

Since this machine uses the same power supply as my IPC, I tested the mainboard with that and it is still in working condition despite some rust on the oscillators and some corrosion on the edge connector (which isn’t used on this machine - I assume it is there for factory testing). The NVRAM battery is dead, of course.

It had a Seagate ST1480N just like the IPC, so I removed that to image it on a different machine. While functional, it is definitely not in the best shape – it makes ungodly loud noises while powered on.

Hardware

• 40MHz Fujitsu MB86903 SPARC CPU+FPU (SPARC V7)
• Sun GX framebuffer onboard
• 48MB RAM
• Sony 1.44MB floppy drive
• ROM Rev 2.6 09 JUN 1992