SPARCstation LX

The SPARCstation LX (Sun 4/30) is a workstation that was sold by Sun Microsystems. It is based on the sun4m architecture, and enclosed in a lunchbox chassis.

The SPARCstation LX shares the code name "Sunergy" with the SPARCclassic, SPARCclassic X, and SPARCstation ZX. [1] The SPARCclassic (Sun 4/15) is a lower cost workstation (described below). The SPARCclassic X (Sun 4/10) is an X terminal version of the SPARCclassic. The SPARCstation ZX is a SPARCstation LX with a Sun ZX "Leo" 24-bit color framebuffer.

Specifications

CPU support

The SPARCstation LX incorporates a single 50 MHz microSPARC processor.

Memory

The SPARCstation LX has three banks with two DSIMM slots each. The official maximum configuration uses 16MB modules, but the first bank can also hold 32MB modules giving a maximum of 128Mb memory.

Disk drives

The SPARCstation LX can hold one internal 50-pin, single ended, fast-narrow SCSI drive and a floppy. It also supports external SCSI devices. There is no IDE/ATAPI support.

Network support

The SPARCstation LX comes with an on-board AMD Lance ethernet chipset providing 10BaseT networking as standard and 10Base2 and 10Base5 via an AUI transceiver. The OpenBoot ROM is able to boot from network, using RARP and TFTP. Like all other SPARCstation systems, the SSC holds system information such as MAC address and serial number in NVRAM. If the battery on this chip dies, then the system will not be able to boot. But it is possible to set some MAC address manually [2] on each boot then it works or change the chip.

Operating systems

The following operating systems will run on a SPARCstation LX:

  • SunOS 4.1.3c onwards
  • Solaris 2.3 Edition II to Solaris 9
  • Linux - Some but not all distribution still support this sparc32 sub-architecture
  • NetBSD/sparc
  • OpenBSD/sparc

Differences between Classic and LX

The SPARCstation LX has an accelerated CG6 framebuffer compared to the SPARCclassic's CG3. The LX also features 16-bit audio as opposed to 8-bit audio for the SPARCclassic. The motherboards of the two systems are otherwise similar, and both use the same chassis.

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://www.shrubbery.net/~heas/sun-feh-2_1/Systems/SUNERGY/SUNERGY_TOC.html
  2. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2005-01-05. Retrieved 2005-01-05.
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