- We still have a SPARC IPX in production, hosting an antiquated database. The hard drive sounds like grinding metal. I've been trying to get rid of it for years. I succeeded once, but it was brought back from the dead. This thing has been running with the original parts since 1993 to 2026, minus ~1 year of downtime.
Nobody has the root password anymore, but fortunately, it's vulnerable to at least seven remote root sunrpc exploits. We "log in" by running a Python script that pops a root shell.
No, I am not kidding.
Edit: Checked out records: purchased and brought online in 1993.
Edit 2: In response to "why don't you just change the password?". When I asked, I was told they "can't" because they'd "lose access to the database". I didn't ask them to elaborate, because it would have opened a whole new can of horror worms, but I removed it from the Internet (it's on a non-routable, weakly "air gapped" network now).
- This box needs an official retirement ceremony when the database is migrated.
- > We "log in" by running a Python script that pops a root shell.
I'm surprised that when you do this, you can't then set the root password. (Also, holy cow. What a durable machine.)
- This was a lot of fun to see, especially part 3 where it boots up. Us older guys (me, anyway) still find joy in seeing these old machines we learned our skills on being restored like this.
Thanks for posting this one. good find.
- God that machine was terrible - underpowered and undercooled, which led to frequent overheating and component failures. When I first started at Sun, they put one of those on my desk as a joke on my first day (it was quickly replaced so that I could get some real work done).
- At work in the 90s we gave tons of old Sparcstation 10s away. They rapidly replaced all IPX and IPS at the computer clubs around Sweden. One Volvo was destined for Luleå and was really weighted down with a trunk full of pizza boxes.
- I managed a lab of them. I _hated them_. They were unreliable, slow, and just absolutely miserable because they created endless complaints.
We were rolling out labs of Windows machines. Except for the lack of terminal, they were better on every single axis for the common university lab use cases - mostly netscape/mosaic and applications..
I also managed NeXT slabs and cubes; they were vastly better than the sun boxes because we had installed HDDs in the cubes and extra memory. The only problem with them was the absolutely terrible, shit behavior when users accidentally browsed the AFS root...
The only positive thing I can say about those Sun boxes is that _one_ behavior was better than NeXT. With NeXT, students would pull the power on them after wating four or five minutes of the beachball due to AFS I/O.
- I remember a lab with diskless systems where your disk quota was smaller than the kernel panic dump. So basically if you crashed a machine your account was instantly filled up and basically nothing would work. I believe it affected mail as well. Fun times.
- But, but ... that cat
- Totally terrible. ONe place I worked we all had sparcs and the first thing that happened whenever anyone left is there would be this mad shuffle where everyone nicked everyone else's computer with the IPX being the prize for whoever wasn't there at the time or the new joiner. So I had the IPX for a while, even just using it as an x client for a remote build server it was horrible.
- Classic day 1 hazing, the Wimp Lo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d696t3yALAY
- Yeah it was a real piece of junk, but I guess there's no accounting for nostalgia. People also like to restore the SGI Indy, easily the worst machine that SGI ever shipped.
At one point decades ago there were a lot of these IPXs and their SCSI accessories on eBay and they were a decent source of project boxes because you could use the power supply and stick your project where the hard drive was supposed to be, with the wires coming out the SCSI port. It looks like the model 411 is still $30 or so on eBay but there are few.
- Hey, don't trash talk Indy like that. It has.. well, it is Web! and has VRML.. and it's your only option for N64 devkit. So, there's that. Overall you're right though. Entry level machine. I have one in working order, rarely has use next to Indigo2 MAX impact. I do have one Sparc, haven't been booted in ages. I have to check whether it's IPX or Classic. I'm even afraid to boot it up.
- oh yeah that's interesting
