[HN Gopher] Of Sun Ray laptops, MIPS and getting root on them ___________________________________________________________________ Of Sun Ray laptops, MIPS and getting root on them Author : zdw Score : 82 points Date : 2023-04-27 02:36 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (oldvcr.blogspot.com) (TXT) w3m dump (oldvcr.blogspot.com) | msh wrote: | I loved the sun ray thin clients. They had them at my university | in the early 2000 and i have not seen a better thin client | solution since. | neilv wrote: | Earlier, Sun made a luggable with distinctive Sun design: | https://thegogglesdonothing.com/archives/2011/10/replacing_t... | classichasclass wrote: | (author) The Voyager is neat, though for obvious reasons I | consider it a portable workstation. I still like the Solbourne | S3000 most in that category of systems. The Voyager is pretty | and in colour, but the S3000 has that flaring gas plasma | display that can heat and light a room. :) | neilv wrote: | Photo comparisons of Solbourne and Voyager: | | http://www.sonic.net/~coad/s3000/index.html | | The orange display is classic. Is it the same tech as in that | Toshiba laptop, and that HP luggable? | tyingq wrote: | There were a few with gas plasma screens. I know the | "Compaq Portable 386" had one, and the IBM PS/2 Model P70 | and P75. | classichasclass wrote: | Not sure exactly which model you mean, but those might have | been electroluminescent and the S3000 is gas plasma, so | different display technology. | | In answer to the page author, yes, the S3000 had a matching | case. Even places to store the cables and the optical mouse | pad. A very stylish black nylon job. | mwcampbell wrote: | Reading about Sun Ray reminds me of Bryan Cantrill's oldest | online DTrace talk [1], particularly the story of how a GNOME 2 | stock ticker applet overloaded a Sun Ray Server, and how Bryan | used DTrace to find the culprit. | | [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgmA48fILq8 | sgt wrote: | > Larry "Destroyer of Worlds" Ellison | | Still upset about that. | jacquesm wrote: | Makers of evil maniac movies will never run out of role models | on planet Earth. | sillywalk wrote: | FTA: "What the Larry Ellison!" | kotaKat wrote: | This reminds me -- if one wanted to get back into running an old | Sun Ray system, where the heck do you get compatible smartcards? | classichasclass wrote: | (author) You don't need them, strictly speaking; you can "just | login." In fact, I only just got a set recently myself. | However, any ISO-7816 compliant card _should_ work. The part | number on my real Sun cards is 370-4333 (specifically | 370-4333-03, 72835). | kotaKat wrote: | Does that include if I want to go back to running a full Sun | Ray server on Linux beyond kOpenRay? | | (I got a stupidly good deal on a 3i that needs to sit on my | desk.) | classichasclass wrote: | Yes, it worked fine just logging in with a user name and | password to my Solaris 10 SRSS installation. No card | necessary. | kotaKat wrote: | Oh, no no no no -- I want to go full-on card-mode. The | roaming concepts are fascinating to me. | foobarian wrote: | Heh, didn't realize they eventually made a Sunray laptop. Since | that site doesn't have pics here is the Wiki page with some | pictures of the desktop thin client: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray | | IIRC it used some custom UDP-based protocol that worked | astonishingly well compared to stuff running over TCP at the time | (X, VNC, etc.) | classichasclass wrote: | (author) Right, Application Link Protocol/ALP. jOpenRay and my | light "treason" fork kOpenRay are open-source | reimplementations, though they still need a lot of work. | getoffmyyawn wrote: | In the middle of winter 2000, I was sent to Sun's "Super | Training" campus in Broomfield, CO. It was a nice little campus | and upon registration I was handed an access card that I could | slot into any Sun Ray on the campus and access the same | persistent desktop. | | There were little clusters of Sun Rays all around the campus and | I was very impressed with the system. It was nice to have a | personal desktop environment I could customize and use for the 2 | weeks that I was there. | jiveturkey wrote: | > The touch pad isn't fabulous | | I swear, the best part of a Mac laptop may be its unmatched touch | pad. | | This is an absolutely fantastic post. Nostalgically inspiring, | and to my reading intensely interesting even if you weren't | previously aware of this technology. I doubt the contextual info | could have been independently researched without having lived | through the era. The author appears to run a gopher (!!) server | so likely he is an old ~fart~ historian, not a young enthusiast. | | The website could use a modern styling update though. It would be | much more approachable. It's not all large font size, excessive | whitespace, and low contrast for the sake of regressing towards | the mean of unusable mediocrity. That said, reader mode makes it | all good. | [deleted] | thomasjb wrote: | This was an extremely interesting read, especially finding out | that perhaps the router chip is the real power onboard. Got me | scouring ebay for old Sun hardware | classichasclass wrote: | (author) Hey, thanks! The 2N is Japan-only, but they turn up on | Yahoo! Japan from time to time, though unfortunately for stupid | money usually. I was lucky with this unit. The Gobi isn't very | common either however. | | If you just want a Sun Ray laptop, the Tadpole M1400 (sometimes | mislabeled by sellers as a Compal FT-01, since that's the OEM | system it was derived from) is not hard to find with a little | patience, but it's "just" a Celeron system so it's not nearly | as interesting. | jandrese wrote: | That is a truly bonkers system design. I am in awe at the | excessive complexity introduced just to reuse some obscure failed | Sun hardware. | dfox wrote: | I suspect that this truly bizarre design was motivated by how | the Sun-provided SunRay firmware could be extended without | rewriting the thing outright (and running ALP client as an | userspace process on a real OS as was done in later SunRay | laptops). | bitwize wrote: | > False starts like NeWS aside, | | You've just activated Don Hopkins's trap card! | cduzz wrote: | I wonder if mentioning "Kibo"[1] will summon him as it did in the | days before the endless summer? | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Parry ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-04-28 23:01 UTC)