Restoring a Sun Microsystems IPX

Refurbishing a Sun Microsystems IPX

This Blog follows the refurbishment of my Sun Microsystems IPX. 

There's a good source for refurbishment info at  a couple of blogs https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/restoring-a-sun-sparcstation-ipx-part-1-psu-and-nvram and https://www.oldsilicon.com/sparcstation-ipx. There are a couple of things I didn't follow in the DesignSpark blog:

  1. He eventually recommends the "Dremmel" approach to modding the existing NVRAM chip. I simply replaced it with with a M48T02-150PC1 chip from RadioSpares (UK)   for less than £20.  This was based on first hand advice from a colleague at The National Museum of Computing who recently restored another IPX. Still get NRAM failure message, and the clock still isn't being saved between power-ups, meaning you can't autoboot.
  2. Like his, my IPX also needed a new fan, however the replacements are connected using modern lead free solder, needing a lot more heat to melt. I managed to cook one joint too much so that the copper strip on the circuit board peeled and broke off. So I had to get another - my advice is just connect the cables together.

Machine arrives 

I made a din8/DB9 modem eliminator cable using the the information on http://www.obsolyte.com/sun_ipx/. Rather than buy a mini din8 plug, as even full-sized din plugs are tricky/messy to solder, I got a premade lead for RadioSpares(UK). Connected to a PC on COM1, and fired it up to get the expected NVRAM (freely also referred to a IDPROM) message. 

 
 

I'd hoped it might not need any work, but had bought the chip in advance.  This was a very simple task of leveraging the old chip out and replacing the new one. Following the NVRAM guide at Obsolyte it was pretty strightforward to setup the new NVRAM chip

The new ST M48T02-150PC1chip in place

 

While I had the machine open I also replaced the fan(joining wires rather than removing/replacing as per the DesignSpark blog The IPX design is very clever, opening up like a sandwich, and with one screw the disk assembly comes out which make the PSU unit easy to remove and change the fan


 

Addressing the Disk Drive

With the NVRAM replaced and reprogrammed, the system booted successfully, quite an acheivement for a 40 year old disk drive !  Based of the experiences of others on the Internent I decided to use a zuluSCSI RP2040 + SD Card as a replacement disk.  Plugging the zuluSCSI + empty exFAT formatted SD card, and original disk, with zuluSCSI set to 'Initiator mode' (see manual) I was able to clone a copy of the orginal disc. 

Removing the old disk drive

 

Renaming the saved image on the SD Card to HD3.img, I was able to reboot the machine sucessfully. 

For my own amusement I then attempted to load other Operating Systems.

New Operating Systems

Using the Internet Archive I downloaded CD install ISO files for SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5, and the last RedHat port for 32bit Sparc systems, 6.2. Copying the ISO images to a new SD Card as CD6_512_xxx.img to force the IPX to believe a Sun (512 byte block) CD-ROM was installed allowed me to the install these ISO images reasonably easily. 

SunOS 4.1.4 with OpenWindows



Solaris 2.5 (OpenWindows)

RedHat 6.2 Server loading

 Installing BSD Unix variants was problematic, but eventually (by re-reading the install guide for the umpteenth time I noticed the couple of paragraphs discussing SCSI disc numbers and BSD disc numbers) got over the problem by using SCSI ID 1 rather than the Sun default for boot discs - 3. 

NetBSD takes about an hour to install, much like OpenBSD, however when it reboots to multi-user mode generates SSH keys - this takes a further hour (or more) before you finally get a login prompt. IT IS quicker booting thereafter - good thing about NetBSD is that it is fairly modern Operating System where Solaris 2.5/SunOS 4.1.4 are 30-40 years old.

Solaris 2.x is very picky about disc geometry, so to be able to install Solaris 2.5/2.6 I had to suffix the zuluScsi SD card HDn filename with ..._512. You can waste hours with stalled/failed attempts without that little nugget !  

OpenBSD X-Windows

NetBSD X-Windows

The strips accors the bottom of the displays are the effect of cheaper VGA monitor combied with the CG-SIX video card's non-mainstream 1152x900 resolution. 

Tried to fit the zuluSCSI drive so that the Floppy Disc case opening aligns with the SD card slot (it doesn't by default annoyingly), but it wouldn't align, so only option for permanent fixing is via the external SCSI connector socket porthole.  

2nd October 2025 

Finally found a reasonably priced flat panel monitor capable of the 1152x900 resolution to add to my retro setup, a NEC Multisync Multisync 90GX2 19". 

NetBSD 10 for Sparc(32)

Took the opportunity to try NetBSD 10 for Sparc32 - it works, but in reality NetBSD 9 or10, especially with X-Windows is too slow (even without the SSH install which takes many, many hours to generate the prime number keys).  Maybe if I could source a Weitek PowerUP chip to double the chip speed it could be different ? I have the SD card safe if I do locate one. 

As mentioned by Old Silicon , Solaris 2.6 +CDE window manager is a good compromise, and I'll use an Intel NUC (Linux Mint) or Raspberry Pi5 I have for the modern stuff - but there IS a Python3 port for Solaris 2.6 available which I may have a play with. Got the Solaris 2.6 (5/98) install CD image from the Internet Archive.

Solaris 2.6 CDE desktop 

27th October 2025

I have been enhancing my Solaris 2.6 base, starting with the Internet Archive sunGNUutilities CD (created by GEKK, as part of his Solaris 2.6 on QEMU emulation) available on the Internet Archive. This has made the O/S usable with the welcome addtion on bash, nano and sudo. Continuing in this vein I obtained a copy of the old SunFreeWare cd image, which has hundreds more GNU tools and to date have got the following installed:

  • GCC, Glib, GTK etc
  • Open SSH , Open SSL, Prngs
  • Samba
  • CMAKE
  • Perl
  • Flex/Bison
  • Emacs
  • Python 3.1
There's an online mirror still available here if you want the odd thing.
 
Must also mention Tom C Christensen/ JupiterRise, who is doing a great job of maintaining old Solaris (sparc & X86) builds of GNU software. He also does the same for SGI/Irix.
 
OpenSSH install and setup was time consuming, with ssh_keygen taking nearly as long as the NetBSD install key generation. On reflection SSH/SSHD is a "bridge to far", for the plucky IPX's little 32bit/40Mhz cpu with only 64Mb RAM. So rlogin it is then !

I still plan on using the IPX as a workstation to connect to my Linux Mint NUC and Raspberry PI, but assembling a working platform with all the familiar tools of old has been very cathartic. 

I also intend to get QEMU (see above) running on my macbook air so I can have a mobile Solaris 2.6 workstation.  

+o+o+