Sun Ultra 5 360 - UltraSPARC IIi 360 MHz

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Average
Design	Very poor
Manufacturer Support	Good
Ease of use	Easy
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Cheap entry level Sun SPARC from 1997
Disadvantages:	Build quality is PC like, and low cache processors

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The Sun UltraSPARC 5 workstation was brought out in 1997, and was priced so you could have one on your desk for approx 1000 US Dollars. They stopped shipping to customers in May 2002. These days, it is not a fast machine, but still they are perfectly useable for many workstation and server tasks.

Processor and Memory -

This model has an UltraSPARC IIi processor which is, of course, 64 bit and is clocked at 360 MHz. You can have 1GB of memory in the workstation, installed as up to 4 DIMMS, which must be installed in pairs. "Normal" PC memory will not work in these workstations. The 260MHz model only has 256kB cache (same with the 270MHz processor) For better performance, you need the 2MB cache version on the 333 or 400MHz versions.

Storage -

There is one HDD bay in the machine, although if you remove the floppy drive, you can put another drive in there. Standard IDE drives work - the onboard IDE controller is reported to support up to 128GB drives. The workstation was shipped with an IDE CDROM drive, although this can be replaced with a CD burner, or DVD drive.

IO -

There are two serial ports on the back of the unit, as is usual on a Sun, if you don't install a keyboard, the console output will be diverted to the "A" serial port. There is a Sun type keyboard connector, Audio in, out, mic in and headphones out, as well as a parallel port. There is an onboard ethernet port (hme).

Framebuffer -

There is a built in framebuffer on the motherboard which is either 8 or 24 bit colour depending on the revision of the board.
I have installed two "raptor" PCI boards in my Ultra 5, so I can dual head the workstation without using the onboard framebuffer.

PCI Slots -

There are three 5V, 32 bit PCI slots inside the workstation.
For a desktop workstation, this is adequate, although it is very difficult to use full lenght PCI cards, like the Sun PCi board in the machine. Framebuffers, qfe, hme and SCSI boards generally fit in fine though. (As I mentioned earlier, I have two raptor framebuffers in my Ultra 5).

Build quality -

The build quality of this box is unlike anything Sun had produced at that time. It's like that of a PC. None of the usual refinements of the SPARCserver and SPARCstation ranges. The case can be crowded when you install several PCI cards, or a second drive. That said, it was the entry level workstation at an exceptionally low price point.

Software -

Solaris 2.5.1 (11/97) up to Solaris 10 (current version) will run on this hardware. Various flavours of BSD and Linux will also run on Sun UltraSPARC hardware.

Value for Money -

Well, at the time it got you an UltraSPARC based Sun for approx 1000 USD. These days, you can pick them up for next to nothing - they are great value for learning Solaris, or playing with BSD or Linux on UltraSPARC hardware.

Community support -

There are many support forums, including the sunhelp.org and newsgroups such as comp.sys.sun.hardware which provide lots of useful information on Sun systems past and present.

Would I buy another one today? Absolutely - but the one I have here does everything I need!