Sun-1
Encyclopedia
Sun-1 was the first generation of UNIX
computer workstations and server
s produced by Sun Microsystems
, launched in May 1982. These were based on a CPU board designed by Andy Bechtolsheim
while he was a graduate student at Stanford University
and funded by DARPA. The Sun-1 systems ran SunOS
0.9, a port of UniSoft
's UniPlus V7 port of Seventh Edition UNIX to the Motorola 68000
microprocessor
, with no window system. Early Sun-1 workstations and servers used the original Sun logo, a series of red "S"s laid out in a square, rather than the more familiar purple diamond shape used later.
The first Sun-1 workstation was sold to Solo Systems in May 1982. The Sun-1/100 was used in the original Lucasfilm
EditDroid
non-linear editing system
.
The Sun 1 workstation was based on the Stanford University
SUN workstation
designed by Andy Bechtolsheim
(advised by Vaughan Pratt and Forrest Baskett), a graduate student and co-founder of Sun Microsystems. At the heart of this design were the Multibus
CPU, memory, and video display cards. The cards used in the Sun-1 workstation were a second-generation design with a private memory bus allowing memory to be expanded to 2 MB without performance degradation.
The Sun 68000 board introduced in 1982 was a powerful single-board computer
. It combined a 10 MHz Motorola 68000
microprocessor
, a Sun designed memory management unit
(MMU), 256 KB of zero wait state
memory with parity, up to 32 KB of EPROM
memory, two serial ports, a 16-bit parallel port and an Intel Multibus
(IEEE 796 bus) interface in a single 12 inches (304.8 mm), 6.75 inches (171.5 mm) Multibus form factor.
By using the Motorola 68000 processor tightly coupled with the Sun-1 MMU the Sun 68000 CPU board was able to support a multi-tasking operating system such as UNIX. It included an advanced Sun designed multi-process two-level memory management unit with facilities for memory protection, code sharing and demand paging of memory.
The CPU board included 256 KB of memory which could be replaced or augmented with two additional memory cards for a total of 2 MB. Although the memory cards used the Multibus form factor, they only used the Multibus interface for power; all memory access was via the smaller private P2 bus. This was a synchronous private memory bus which allowed for simultaneous memory input/output transfers. It also allowed for full performance zero wait state
operation of the memory. When installing the first 1 MB expansion board either the 256 Kb of memory on the CPU board or the first 256 KB on the expansion board had to be disabled.
On-board I/O included a dual serial port UART and a 16-bit parallel port. The serial ports were implemented with an Intel 8274 UART and later with a NEC D7201C UART. Serial port A was wired as a Data Communications Equipment (DCE) port and had full modem control. It was also the console port if no graphical display was installed in the system. Serial port B was wired as a Data Terminal Equipment
(DTE) port and had no modem control. Both serial ports could also be used as terminal ports and quite often were allowing 3 people to use one workstation, although two did not have graphical displays. The 16-bit parallel port was a special purpose port for connecting 8-bit parallel port keyboard and 8-bit parallel port optical mouse for workstations with graphical displays. The parallel port was never used as a general purpose parallel printer port.
The CPU board included a fully compatible Multibus (IEEE 796 bus). It was an asynchronous bus that accommodated devices with various transfer rates while maintaining maximum throughput. It had 20 address lines so it could address up to 1 MB of Multibus memory and 1 MB of I/O locations although most I/O devices only decoded the first 64 KB of address space. The Sun CPU board fully supported multi-master functionality that allowed it to share the Multibus with other DMA devices.
The keyboard was a Micro Switch 103SD30-2, or a KeyTronic P2441 for the German market. The memory-mapped, bit-mapped frame buffer (graphics) board had a resolution of 1024×1024 pixel
s, but only 1024×800 was displayed on the monitor. The graphics board included hardware to accelerate raster operations. A Ball
model HD17H 17-inch video display monitor was used. An Ethernet
board was available, originally implementing the 3 Mbit/s Xerox
PARC Ethernet specification, which was later upgraded to the 3Com
10 Mbit/s version. An Interphase SMD
2180 disk controller could be installed to connect up to four Fujitsu
84 MB M2313K or CDC
16.7 MB (8.35 MB fixed, 8.35 MB removable) 9455 Lark drives. All of the boards were installed in a 6 or 7-slot Multibus
card cage.
Later documentation shows that a 13- or 19-inch color display was available. The color frame buffer had a resolution of 640×512 pixel
s, with 640×480 displayed on the monitor. The board could display 256 colors from a palette of 16 million. ½-inch 9-track reel-to-reel tape drives and QIC-02 ¼-inch cartridge tape drives were also added to the offering.
There was also a second generation Sun-1 CPU board referred to as the Sun-1.5 CPU board.
Sun-1 systems upgraded with Sun-2
Multibus CPU boards were identified with a U suffix to their model number.
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
computer workstations and server
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
s produced by Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
, launched in May 1982. These were based on a CPU board designed by Andy Bechtolsheim
Andy Bechtolsheim
Andreas von Bechtolsheim is an electrical engineer who co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer....
while he was a graduate student at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
and funded by DARPA. The Sun-1 systems ran SunOS
SunOS
SunOS is a version of the Unix operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems. The SunOS name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4 of SunOS...
0.9, a port of UniSoft
UniSoft
UniSoft Corporation is a former Unix vendor that now works on software for digital television development and broadcast.- History :UniSoft was founded in 1981, initially working as a Unix porting house, completing over 225 Unix ports to numerous CPU architectures. Its port of Version 7 Unix was the...
's UniPlus V7 port of Seventh Edition UNIX to the Motorola 68000
Motorola 68000
The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit CISC microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor...
microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
, with no window system. Early Sun-1 workstations and servers used the original Sun logo, a series of red "S"s laid out in a square, rather than the more familiar purple diamond shape used later.
The first Sun-1 workstation was sold to Solo Systems in May 1982. The Sun-1/100 was used in the original Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO....
EditDroid
EditDroid
The EditDroid was a computerized analog NLE , developed by Lucasfilm spin-off company, the Droid Works and Convergence Corporation who formed a joint venture company. The company existed up through the mid-80's to the early 90's in an attempt to move from analog editing methods to digital...
non-linear editing system
Non-linear editing system
In video, a non-linear editing system is a video editing or audio editing digital audio workstation system which can perform random access non-destructive editing on the source material...
.
Models
| Model | Chassis |
|---|---|
| Sun 100 | 7-slot Multibus (desktop) |
| Sun 150 | 15-slot Multibus (rackmount) |
Hardware
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
SUN workstation
SUN workstation
The original SUN workstation was a modular computer system designed at Stanford University in the early 1980s.-History:The project name was derived from Stanford University Network, the campus network within Stanford....
designed by Andy Bechtolsheim
Andy Bechtolsheim
Andreas von Bechtolsheim is an electrical engineer who co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer....
(advised by Vaughan Pratt and Forrest Baskett), a graduate student and co-founder of Sun Microsystems. At the heart of this design were the Multibus
Multibus
Multibus is a computer bus standard used in industrial systems. It was developed by Intel Corporation and was adopted as the IEEE 796 bus.The Multibus specification was important because it was a robust, well-thought out industry standard with a relatively large form factor so complex devices could...
CPU, memory, and video display cards. The cards used in the Sun-1 workstation were a second-generation design with a private memory bus allowing memory to be expanded to 2 MB without performance degradation.
The Sun 68000 board introduced in 1982 was a powerful single-board computer
Single-board computer
A single-board computer is a complete computer built on a single circuit board, with microprocessor, memory, input/output and other features required of a functional computer. Unlike a typical personal computer, an SBC may not include slots into which accessory cards may be plugged...
. It combined a 10 MHz Motorola 68000
Motorola 68000
The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit CISC microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor...
microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
, a Sun designed memory management unit
Memory management unit
A memory management unit , sometimes called paged memory management unit , is a computer hardware component responsible for handling accesses to memory requested by the CPU...
(MMU), 256 KB of zero wait state
Zero wait state
Zero wait state is a feature of a processor or computer architecture in which the processor does not have to wait to perform memory access....
memory with parity, up to 32 KB of EPROM
EPROM
An EPROM , or erasable programmable read only memory, is a type of memory chip that retains its data when its power supply is switched off. In other words, it is non-volatile. It is an array of floating-gate transistors individually programmed by an electronic device that supplies higher voltages...
memory, two serial ports, a 16-bit parallel port and an Intel Multibus
Multibus
Multibus is a computer bus standard used in industrial systems. It was developed by Intel Corporation and was adopted as the IEEE 796 bus.The Multibus specification was important because it was a robust, well-thought out industry standard with a relatively large form factor so complex devices could...
(IEEE 796 bus) interface in a single 12 inches (304.8 mm), 6.75 inches (171.5 mm) Multibus form factor.
By using the Motorola 68000 processor tightly coupled with the Sun-1 MMU the Sun 68000 CPU board was able to support a multi-tasking operating system such as UNIX. It included an advanced Sun designed multi-process two-level memory management unit with facilities for memory protection, code sharing and demand paging of memory.
The CPU board included 256 KB of memory which could be replaced or augmented with two additional memory cards for a total of 2 MB. Although the memory cards used the Multibus form factor, they only used the Multibus interface for power; all memory access was via the smaller private P2 bus. This was a synchronous private memory bus which allowed for simultaneous memory input/output transfers. It also allowed for full performance zero wait state
Zero wait state
Zero wait state is a feature of a processor or computer architecture in which the processor does not have to wait to perform memory access....
operation of the memory. When installing the first 1 MB expansion board either the 256 Kb of memory on the CPU board or the first 256 KB on the expansion board had to be disabled.
On-board I/O included a dual serial port UART and a 16-bit parallel port. The serial ports were implemented with an Intel 8274 UART and later with a NEC D7201C UART. Serial port A was wired as a Data Communications Equipment (DCE) port and had full modem control. It was also the console port if no graphical display was installed in the system. Serial port B was wired as a Data Terminal Equipment
Data terminal equipment
Data Terminal Equipment is an end instrument that converts user information into signals or reconverts received signals. These can also be called tail circuits. A DTE device communicates with the data circuit-terminating equipment...
(DTE) port and had no modem control. Both serial ports could also be used as terminal ports and quite often were allowing 3 people to use one workstation, although two did not have graphical displays. The 16-bit parallel port was a special purpose port for connecting 8-bit parallel port keyboard and 8-bit parallel port optical mouse for workstations with graphical displays. The parallel port was never used as a general purpose parallel printer port.
The CPU board included a fully compatible Multibus (IEEE 796 bus). It was an asynchronous bus that accommodated devices with various transfer rates while maintaining maximum throughput. It had 20 address lines so it could address up to 1 MB of Multibus memory and 1 MB of I/O locations although most I/O devices only decoded the first 64 KB of address space. The Sun CPU board fully supported multi-master functionality that allowed it to share the Multibus with other DMA devices.
The keyboard was a Micro Switch 103SD30-2, or a KeyTronic P2441 for the German market. The memory-mapped, bit-mapped frame buffer (graphics) board had a resolution of 1024×1024 pixel
Pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel, or pel, is a single point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled....
s, but only 1024×800 was displayed on the monitor. The graphics board included hardware to accelerate raster operations. A Ball
Ball Corp.
Ball Corporation , originally Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company, is an American company famous for producing glass canning jars. Founded in 1880, it is currently headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. The company has expanded into other areas such as avionics, space systems, metal beverage...
model HD17H 17-inch video display monitor was used. An Ethernet
Ethernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
board was available, originally implementing the 3 Mbit/s Xerox
Xerox
Xerox Corporation is an American multinational document management corporation that produced and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies...
PARC Ethernet specification, which was later upgraded to the 3Com
3Com
3Com was a pioneering digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network infrastructure products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney, Bruce Borden, and Greg Shaw...
10 Mbit/s version. An Interphase SMD
Storage Module Device
Storage Module Device was a family of storage devices first shipped by Control Data Corporation in December 1973 as the CDC 9760 40 MB storage module disk drive. The CDC 9762 80 MB variant was announced in June 1974 and the CDC 9764 150 MB and the CDC 9766 300 MB variants were announced in 1975...
2180 disk controller could be installed to connect up to four Fujitsu
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues....
84 MB M2313K or CDC
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation was a supercomputer firm. For most of the 1960s, it built the fastest computers in the world by far, only losing that crown in the 1970s after Seymour Cray left the company to found Cray Research, Inc....
16.7 MB (8.35 MB fixed, 8.35 MB removable) 9455 Lark drives. All of the boards were installed in a 6 or 7-slot Multibus
Multibus
Multibus is a computer bus standard used in industrial systems. It was developed by Intel Corporation and was adopted as the IEEE 796 bus.The Multibus specification was important because it was a robust, well-thought out industry standard with a relatively large form factor so complex devices could...
card cage.
Later documentation shows that a 13- or 19-inch color display was available. The color frame buffer had a resolution of 640×512 pixel
Pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel, or pel, is a single point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled....
s, with 640×480 displayed on the monitor. The board could display 256 colors from a palette of 16 million. ½-inch 9-track reel-to-reel tape drives and QIC-02 ¼-inch cartridge tape drives were also added to the offering.
There was also a second generation Sun-1 CPU board referred to as the Sun-1.5 CPU board.
Sun-1 systems upgraded with Sun-2
Sun-2
The Sun-2 series of UNIX workstations and servers was launched by Sun Microsystems in November 1983. As the name suggests, the Sun-2 represented the second generation of Sun systems, superseding the original Sun-1 series...
Multibus CPU boards were identified with a U suffix to their model number.