The Collection

Release date: 1991

CPU: Fujitsu MB86903 (installed in this unit) or Weitek W8701, both 40MHz

Random Access Memory installed : 64MB

Max. Random Access Memory : 64MB

I/O-Busses: S-BUS, SCSI2-SE

SN: 228M1428

Story:

In size, the SPARCstation IPX is one of the smallest workstations in my collection.
I was given this system during my studies by the "Digital Signal Processing Group" of the department "Electrical Engineering" of Darmstadt, Technical University.
This SUN workstation was used as a small DHCP-server before being shut down at the department.
It's amazing, how densely it is packed! And everything is in there, you'd want regarding peripherals.
Several years ago, I paned to use it as my internet router, but the Cobalt Qube 2 finally made the job, back then.

More pictures of the SPARCstation IPX:


	The backside of the IPX: Very compact, but still offering all kinds of connectors. From left to right: SCSI, Ethernet (AUI), serial A, serial B, Graphics, Keyboard, Audio. Above the connectors are the two filler-panels of the SBUS expansion boards.
As an option, the chasis can be installed vertically. In order to hide the plastic square feet which you can see in the first picture, there is an extra case to hide the feet. The IPX here looks as if it was built to be only installed in a vertical way. A very nice detail!
	The case is formed by two chassis-halves which are put together when the case is closed. Opening the case results in putting the above part next to the lower one. As a typical approach by SUN to be found in most of their workstations, the inner parts are well placed. Nothing seems to be misplaced, everyhting is well-arranged. This garantuees a good airflow through the chassis and helps when servicing the machine. The upper part of the chassis contains the power-supply, the floppy disk drive and the hard disk (Seagate ST1480N), the lower chassis-half houses the mainboard and the audio speaker.
The lower chassis-half with the mainboard: The upper part contains the memory (up to 64MB), in the middle can be observed three large chips. From left to right: Cache-Chip, CPU and the framebuffer chip. Below the frame-buffer chip is located the frame-buffer memory (2x 4 VRAM memory chips). The onboard frame buffer is of type GX-cg6. It has a maximum resolution of 1022x1000 pixels at 76Hz.
	Close-up of the upper part of the mainboard: Memory SIMMs and flat ribbon cables to floppy disk and hard disk. On the left side is a chip with a yellow sticker. That is the NVRAM, the non-volatile memory, which stores configuration data of the IPX.
Lower part of the mainboard, which is densely packed with components.The big chip in the middle represents the CPU which is placed an a socket.The IPX can be upgraded by replacing this CPU running at 40MHz with a Weitek "Power-Up"-CPU. It internally runs with double the frequency of the "standard IPX CPUs" and thus boosts performance of the IPX.
	Upper chassis-half containing the power supply and the peripherals. Every part of the chassis is used, there are no empty spaces between the floppy disk and the hard disk. Cables are well-placed. The hard disk is half-height (3.5 HH), which offered high-capacity drives during the 90's which usually had these dimensions. The particular drive, which came with that IPX is a Seagate SCSI2-drive ST1480N with 426MB capacity.