The SPARCstation LX (Sun 4/30) is a

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''worksta ...

that was designed, manufactured, and sold by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, ...

. Introduced in November 1992, it is based on the sun4m architecture and enclosed in a lunchbox chassis. It shares the code name ''Sunergy'' with the low-end range of SPARCclassic, SPARCclassic X, and

SPARCstation ZX The SPARCstation ZX is a computer workstation produced by Sun Microsystems and launched in August 1993. It was end-of-lifed in March 1994. The original price was USD $19,995.00. The SPARCstation ZX was identical to the SPARCstation LX, with the a ...

Specifications

CPU support

The SPARCstation LX incorporates a single 50 MHz

microSPARC The microSPARC (code-named ''Tsunami'') is a discontinued microprocessor implementing the SPARC V8 instruction set architecture (ISA), developed by Sun Microsystems. It is a low-end microprocessor intended for low-end workstations and embedded s ...

processor.

Memory

The SPARCstation LX has three banks with two DSIMM slots each. The official maximum configuration uses 16MB modules, but the first bank can also hold 32MB modules giving a maximum of 128MB memory.

Disk drives

The SPARCstation LX can hold one internal 3.5-inch 50-pin, single ended, fast-narrow

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...

drive and a floppy drive. It also supports external SCSI devices. There is no IDE/

ATAPI ATA Packet Interface (ATAPI) is a protocol that has been added to Parallel ATA and Serial ATA so that a greater variety of devices can be connected to a computer than with the ATA command set alone. It carries SCSI commands and responses through th ...

support.

Network support

The SPARCstation LX comes with an on-board AMD Lance

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...

chipset providing

10BASE-T 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. ...

networking as standard and

10Base2 10BASE2 (also known as cheapernet, thin Ethernet, thinnet, and thinwire) is a variant of Ethernet that uses thin coaxial cable terminated with BNC connectors to build a local area network. During the mid to late 1980s this was the dominan ...

and

10Base5 10BASE5 (also known as thick Ethernet or thicknet) was the first commercially available variant of Ethernet. The technology was standardized in 1982 as IEEE 802.3. 10BASE5 uses a thick and stiff coaxial cable up to in length. Up to 100 stati ...

via an AUI transceiver. The OpenBoot ROM is able to boot from network, using RARP and TFTP. Like all other

SPARCstation The SPARCstation, SPARCserver and SPARCcenter product lines are a series of SPARC-based computer workstations and servers in desktop, desk side (pedestal) and rack-based form factor configurations, that were developed and sold by Sun Microsystem ...

systems, the SPARCstation LX holds system information such as

MAC address A media access control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC) for use as a network address in communications within a network segment. This use is common in most IEEE 802 networking tec ...

and serial number in NVRAM. If the battery on this chip dies, then the system will not be able to boot, but it is possible to set a MAC address manually on each boot.

Operating systems

The following operating systems will run on a SPARCstation LX: *

SunOS SunOS is a Unix-branded operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems. The ''SunOS'' name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4, which were based on BSD, while versions 5.0 ...

4.1.3c onwards * Solaris 2.3 Edition II to Solaris 9 *

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

- Some but not all distribution still support this sparc32 sub-architecture *

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is a ...

/sparc32 *

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking N ...

/sparc32

Differences between ZX and LX

The SPARCstation ZX is a SPARCstation LX with a Sun ZX "Leo" 24-bit color

framebuffer A framebuffer (frame buffer, or sometimes framestore) is a portion of random-access memory (RAM) containing a bitmap that drives a video display. It is a memory buffer containing data representing all the pixels in a complete video frame. Moder ...

Differences between Classic and LX

The SPARCstation LX has an accelerated CG6

compared to the SPARCclassic's CG3. The LX also features 16-bit audio as opposed to 8-bit audio for the SPARCclassic. The motherboards of the two systems are otherwise similar, and both use the same chassis.

References

External links

Obsolyte: SPARCstation Classic and LX

Specifications and photos for SPARCstation LX

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sparcstation Lx Sun workstations SPARC microprocessor products