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Sun Microsystems is probably my favorite tech company ever created. While other companies like Apple, IBM, and Microsoft seemed more interested in lining their CEO's pockets than anything else, Sun seemed more interested in genuinely advancing the microcomputer workstation industry.
For a long time I wanted to get my own Sun computer, but they're very sought after by collectors and therefore go for pretty high prices on sites like eBay, plus it's very unlikely yours will survive shipping all in one piece. However, in mid 2025, I finally got the opportunity to buy one at a local flea market with a bunch of amazing old tech available. I left with an Apple IIc in terrible condition (but it was only $25!), an IBM 3151 serial terminal (another holy grail of mine), and what would soon become my all time favorite retro computer.
This is the Sun Ultra 10, a 64-bit UltraSPARC IIi workstation released by Sun Microsystems in 1998. To someone unfamiliar with Sun, they might assume this is a regular late 90's era PC. After all, it's in a pretty typical PC style case, it has pretty standard looking ports on the back, and if you look inside you'll see PCI slots for expansion. However, this is not a PC. It doesn't have an x86 CPU, rather it uses a CPU from a mostly defunct RISC architecture called SPARC.
On the back there's a standard VGA port, a proprietary keyboard port (which looks like PS/2, but isn't PS/2), RS232 serial ports, Ethernet, and headphone ports. There's no mouse port, rather the keyboard has a port which the mouse plugs into. The keyboard is pretty infamously flimsy and certainly not the best to type on. I got it with the computer though and it works. The mouse is a three button ball mouse without a scroll wheel.
On startup, the OpenBoot firmware appears. This is somewhat like the PC's BIOS, but as its own interactive shell. When it boots, it detects the network and waits for a certain packet. This can be skipped by pressing Ctrl+Stop on the keyboard. It is possible to change this behavior so it just boots directly to the disk, but the CMOS battery is unfortunately long dead. While it can theoretically be replaced, it's actually a battery embedded inside a proprietary chip. It's possible to mod it to accept a standard coin battery, but I'm not personally skilled enough for this. Thus, to boot from the disk, I have to type "boot disk".
Originally the computer came with a 20GB IDE Seagate HDD. There's a label from 2001 on it which suggests this specific system might have been manufactured around that time. (The Sun Ultra 10 was produced up until 2002, making this a pretty late model.) However, I'm not the biggest fan of spinning disks because they can be slow and old ones are more at risk of failing. Luckily, since it's a completely standard IDE drive interface, I was able to put a SATA to IDE adapter inside along with a 128GB Lexar SSD! While it's not much faster than the HDD, it has more space and will likely be more reliable. I'm sure some people will disagree with my choice to put an SSD rather than an authetic HDD, but it's what I personally prefer and it doesn't really affect regular usage of the computer that much.