I've been putting off picking up a couple from
someone as the boat-anchor
alarm bells were ringing :-) Maybe it is worth my while to go get them even if
they only realistically sell for a fraction of that price. I suppose Sun fans
like to use them for their intended purpose (for which they'll do a capable
job) - and unlike the desktop workstations they just don't turn up that often.
I wouldn't get more than one, but one could be a good addition to your museum. Sun4d
was Sun's first large-scale SMP
architecture (possibly the comparison to a SPARCstation came from the fact that in a 4d
the XDbus was bridged to MBus-based
processor boards that had SuperSPARC modules (2x per board) on them (and SBus slots).
Oftentimes the SPARCservers were paired with a SPARCstorage array which used a nonstandard
(prestandard) fiber link up
and mix of hardware and software control/striping. This combined with the fact that they
are very picky about cooling (30 drives fit in one chassis)
was why I didn't get one when I had the chance. Support for Sun4d stopped with Solaris
8. They won't run SunOS 4. I think that you can drop in
a SBus framebuffer and run it headed. Wouldn't spend $300 on one, but I'd consider
one for free as long as it wasn't too far away.
I don't know about the boat anchor, but they'd make a nice sturdy step or stool if
nothing else.