SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))

[Alan Perry]

I wrote:
 >... yesterday I managed to take the two SPARCstation 20s that I gotfrom
 >Pete's and make one working dual-processor SS20. I alsopassed on one of
 >the SS5s to its new owner. The person who originally spoke up for the
 >SS20 has not responded to subsequent e-mail, so it may be available. I
 >will also have a SS1 and SS2 available, but I need to order more IDPROMs
 >before I can finish refurb'ing them.

An update - The person who spoke up for a SS20 responded this morning and
the one that I put together from the two broken ones from Pete's will soon
be on its way to its new home.

What I have left to give away are:

- SPARCstation 20 chassis. No top cover. The front left corner plastic
  cover is missing and the front right plastic cover has broken tabs and
  won't stay on. It has a working power supply and a motherboard that the
  firmware reports "replace motherboard" during diagnostics. It has no
  MBus (processor) or SBus cards nor any memory. It has the HDD backplane,
  cabling for the HDD and optical drive, and the drive cooling fan.

- SPARCstation 2. Complete and boots into SunOS 4. It has 48M memory, a
  Sun207 (nominal 207M) HDD, and a 3.5" floppy drive. It also has an extra
  SCSI SBus card (501-1759) and a GX CG6 frame buffer, dual-slot SBus card
  (501-1645). It has a bad IDPROM and the case needs to be cleaned. It has
  its hostname "smoked" written all over it; I don't know if there is a
  story that goes with that.

- SPARCstation 1. Chassis is intact. It has a bad IDPROM; aside from that
  it passes onboard diagnostics. It has 12M memory, no HDD now, and a 3.5"
  floppy drive. It has no SBus cards. Aside from the IDPROM, it doesn't
  have any issues (but I haven't run an OS on it yet). Like the SS2, it
  needs a bath. A small portion of the plastic cover over the rear of the
  case is broken off.

If you want one of these, the systems themselves are free. I just want
shipping costs and actual parts expenses (i.e., IDPROMs, HDDs, etc.). The
22x22x6 box that they fit in costs $15 (when bought one-at-a-time). I
haven't weighed a SS1/2, but the boxed SS20 weighed 30 lbs. The ship-from
zip is 98110. If you are local to Puget Sound, I will deliver.

What are these "actual parts expenses"? IDPROMs are around $25 on Mouser.
SCSI HDDs start around $70 shipped on eBay and SCSI2SD are $60 plus
shipping to me plus the SD price. Given the price of 25 year old HDDs with
a stated service life of 5 years (according to one spec sheet that I read),
SCSI2SD looks pretty attractive.

If no one chimes in NOW and says that he wants one to refurb himself, I
will start refurb'ing the SS1 and 2.

alan