Hardware Sun-1

sun 100u cardcage

the sun 1 workstation based on stanford university sun workstation designed andy bechtolsheim (advised vaughan pratt , forrest baskett), graduate student , co-founder of sun microsystems. @ heart of design multibus cpu, memory, , video display cards. cards used in sun-1 workstation second-generation design private memory bus allowing memory expanded 2 mb without performance degradation.

the sun 68000 board introduced in 1982 powerful single-board computer. combined 10 mhz motorola 68000 microprocessor, sun designed memory management unit (mmu), 256 kb of 0 wait state memory parity, 32 kb of eprom memory, 2 serial ports, 16-bit parallel port , intel multibus (ieee 796 bus) interface in single 12-inch-wide (300 mm), 6.75-inch-deep (171 mm) multibus form factor.

by using motorola 68000 processor tightly coupled sun-1 mmu sun 68000 cpu board able support multi-tasking operating system such unix. included advanced sun designed multi-process two-level memory management unit facilities memory protection, code sharing , demand paging of memory. sun-1 mmu necessary because motorola 68451 mmu did not work correctly 68000 , not restore processor state after page fault.

the cpu board included 256 kb of memory replaced or augmented 2 additional memory cards total of 2 mb. although memory cards used multibus form factor, used multibus interface power; memory access via smaller private p2 bus. synchronous private memory bus allowed simultaneous memory input/output transfers. allowed full performance 0 wait state operation of memory. when installing first 1 mb expansion board either 256 kb of memory on cpu board or first 256 kb on expansion board had disabled.

on-board i/o included dual serial port uart , 16-bit parallel port. serial ports implemented intel 8274 uart , later nec d7201c uart. serial port wired data communications equipment (dce) port , had full modem control. console port if no graphical display installed in system. serial port b wired data terminal equipment (dte) port , had no modem control. both serial ports used terminal ports , quite allowing 3 people use 1 workstation, although 2 did not have graphical displays. 16-bit parallel port special purpose port connecting 8-bit parallel port keyboard , 8-bit parallel port optical mouse workstations graphical displays. parallel port never used general purpose parallel printer port.

the cpu board included compatible multibus (ieee 796 bus). asynchronous bus accommodated devices various transfer rates while maintaining maximum throughput. had 20 address lines address 1 mb of multibus memory , 1 mb of i/o locations although i/o devices decoded first 64 kb of address space. sun cpu board supported multi-master functionality allowed share multibus other dma devices.

the keyboard micro switch 103sd30-2, or keytronic p2441 german market. memory-mapped, bit-mapped frame buffer (graphics) board had resolution of 1024×1024 pixels, 1024×800 displayed on monitor. graphics board included hardware accelerate raster operations. ball model hd17h 17-inch video display monitor used. ethernet board available, implementing 3 mbit/s xerox parc ethernet specification, later upgraded 3com 10 mbit/s version. interphase smd 2180 disk controller installed connect 4 fujitsu 84 mb m2313k or cdc 16.7 mb (8.35 mb fixed, 8.35 mb removable) 9455 lark drives. of boards installed in 6 or 7-slot multibus card cage.

later documentation shows 13- or 19-inch color display available. color frame buffer had resolution of 640×512 pixels, 640×480 displayed on monitor. board display 256 colors palette of 16 million. ½-inch 9-track reel-to-reel tape drives , qic-02 ¼-inch cartridge tape drives added offering.

there second generation sun-1 cpu board referred sun-1.5 cpu board.

sun-1 systems upgraded sun-2 multibus cpu boards identified u suffix model number.

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