The Sun is shining 24/7 in my home…
Ever since I first came into contact with them at university, Sparcs interested me. They seemed so much better built than PCs and they had this aura of "professionalism" about them then… ;-) …and they were mind-bogglingly expensive.
Nonetheless, in 2001, I got my hands on a used Sparcstation 2. Boy, was I proud! It almost felt like buying that C64 more than 10 years earlier… It wasn't fast, it wasn't top of the line but still – I loved that machine.
It also caused an avalanche: More and more Sparcs were coming into our home or leaving it again. The collection has been changing constantly over the years – and the Sparcstation 2 has long since found a new home… Due to time constraints, not much was happening with the Suns anymore. Early in 2010, I even started thinking about scaling it down and getting rid of some machines - but then everything changed…
In Spring 2010, Peter Koch announced on sonnenblen.de that he would have to close his Sun4-Zoo for good. He started giving away his machines (and boy, did he have a lot of them…). To cut a long story short, three car trips later, my own collection had suddenly grown significantly and I had decided to keep all of them. A huge Thank you! to Peter!
In the long term, I hope to get all of them into working order, with some OS installed, just so I can pick any one of them and show what computing was like in those days… Until then, most of them will stay in piles and I just enjoy looking at them. ;-)
In case you're interested in the collection, you can have a look at Sunrem.
On U1, you will find some tips about fitting a hard drive with 1.6" height into a U1 – a possibility apparently not as commonly known as I thought.